Just got this throw today - love it, but just curious how to pronounce it! 
“FEH-nom-izm” - kind of reminiscent of “Feminism” ? ;D
"Feh-NOM-izm - kind of like “Phenomenon” ?
or perhaps
“Feh-nom-IZ-um” ?
Never heard anyone say the name. Just idly curious.
Thanks in advance :-*
I thought it was pronounced “fee-nom-izm”
Yeah I was thinking fee-nom-izm.
Could be! Heh… 
I was also curious about which syllable is stressed.
The first syllable is not a long ‘e’. If is not feeeeee. It is short… ‘Feh’… Like eh with an f in front.
Feh-nom. Feh-nom-ism.
Root word=Phenominal.
If you see a guy on a Skateboard, do 10 backside 360’s on the top edge of a cinderblock wall; you might say, ‘wow, that was Phenominal’! You sure would not say,‘Feeee-nominal’!
Yup
I only say that because I hear people pronounce the “Phenom” as “Fee-nom.”
I heard Tessa from yyj pronounce it that way. I dunno the legit way. I like the sound of “Feh-nom” better anyway.
Phenom would be “fee-nom”.
Phenomizm would use the shorter E sound.
You can hear Mickey pronounce it here:
His pronunciation is somewhere between the sounds used in “phenom” and “phenomenal”. It actually sounds like he is using the typical Japanese “e” sound, which is similar to a shortened long “a” sound in English. He also uses the longer Japanese “o” sound rather than the shorter “o” we would use in English.
I’ve mostly heard it pronounced in English with Phenom as the root word, probably since it is a spinoff of the Phenom and is stylized by YYJ as PHENOMizm.
So, “PHEN-om-izm” it is.
Since the all-metal is the Phenom (“fee-nom”) I didn’t see any reason for the long-e to change for its metal/plastic sibling. The root is “phenom” not “phenomenon”, although I’m sure both words in turn share the same latin origin.
Saying any variation aloud is pretty awkward… “Fee-NAW-mism”? No accented syllable? “FEE-nom-ism”? If you made me say it aloud (and you can’t!) I would go with this last one.
This. We’ve heard Mickey himself pronounce it, so I believe the case is closed.
“Fen-o-mism”
I don’t buy that argument. 
The word is clearly an English-derived word. Just because it’s his signature doesn’t mean it’s impossible for him to mispronounce it! Jacques Laroque has a new signature yoyo with Nutty Yoyo Corp. that’s called the Tiger. He’s talking about it in an interview, and in his French accent, it sounds more like “teeger”. Do we all start calling his signature throw the “teeger”? Not likely!
Not saying that my interpretation is the right one; just that to me the case isn’t closed. No matter how much Mickey can be considered an expert on his own yoyo, this is still an “Appeal from authority” argument, which is a logical fallacy.
True, but until we hear differently (that he did mispronounce it) seems we should go with how he says it. I’d guess chances are small that he is mis-pronouncing it - particularly assuming that he knows about the “Phenom” (FEE-nom) yoyo and its pronunciation. ;D
How much more proof does one need? You might say it “Fee-nom” because of your accent, but it seems that most of Japan agrees on its correct pronunciation.
Thanks… Gambit. I actually tried offering a valid, accurate explanation. But some people prefer their own individual pronunciations. You notice that link I posted up of the girl actually articulating an associated word, seemed to fall on deaf ears, lol. She even says,‘watch my lips as I speak the word’.
The video link you posted pretty much buries the axe head in the tree stump.
So, it’s a Mickey Signature yoyo, he named it, he says the name out loud. And yet others chime in to suggest it Mickey is saying the name incorrectly?
Whatever, hahahahahaha.
C’mon, Mo. You’re a logical guy! I’m just pointing out that it’s an “Appeal from authority” which is quite simply a logical fallacy. It just is. As much as a red herring or a circular argument.
It’s probably pronounced the way you say (I DID say that I’m not claiming mine is correct…). I just think it’s a mistake to think that a person is correct based on false premises (appeal from authority).
Another person’s pronounciation (also from the same country…) is still appeal from authority, although they’re even less of an authority than Mickey!
Also… the video you posted was for the word “phenomenal”. Not the word “phenom”. Which is pronounced “fee-nom”. I already addressed this point…it’s not like I ignored it; it was just invalid and I explained why. The original metal is called the Phenom. It makes sense that the follow-up would be based on the same word, no?
But, some people just don’t like to actually read the logical and sensible counter-arguments, instead just assuming that the first thing they posted is correct, plugging their ears and going “lalalala” when somebody else says, “OK, but what about this…” because they don’t want to spend the mental energy considering another perspective.
Whatever, hahahahaha!
Fen-om-iz-em is how I pronounce it
Well personally I believe the Japanese got it, this is because a lot of them spend quite sometime to learn the English language correctly. While here in America we sort of slouch off and sometimes we slur words together and do not spend that much time on learning the English language properly (unless you are a English major). At any rate the English language is messed up anyways, so really anything goes.
Just to be clear: I think that regional pronounciations are fine. I don’t think Mickey is “mispronouncing” it, either. But if the question is, “for me, as a native English speaker, how do I pronounce ‘phenom’,” there’s only one answer: “fee-nom”.
Since the PHENOMizm is just “fee-nom” with the “izm” tacked on, I’m simply making a logical extension that it seems like it should be pronounced “fee-nom-ism”.
Let’s go to a different yoyo for a second… oh, I dunno… the Sleipnir? Nobody in this thread pronounces it exactly the way you would pronounce it in Old Norse, and not many of us pronounce it the way you would in a Scandinavian country. There’s probably a sizeable split between “Slape-near”, “Slype-near” and “Sleep-near” for that matter. Now, YYR is a Japanese company, and I would be willing to bet that a great many people in the Japanese yoyo community, including YYR staff and players, would pronounce it differently yet again… the “SL” dipthong doesn’t work too well for Japanese speakers, and there tends to be extra sounds after hard consonants, just as in French. Suffice it to say, when speaking in Japanese or in English with a Japanese accent, those fine folks ARE pronouncing it correctly for their region!
So the question is: when we are NOT pronouncing it with a Japanese accent, are we mispronouncing it? After all, YYR named it… shouldn’t we pronounce it how they named it? Should we make sure we’re effecting a proper french accent when we say “La Goutte?” Do I need to roll my “R” for “El Ranchero,” or is it OK to pronounce it otherwise because it was named by a Canadian company? I’ll tell you this much: I pronounce “karate” “ka-roddy” (more or less) because when I try to say “kara-TAY” (accent on last syllable) I feel like all kinds of a d-bag.
Back to Mickey: it’s worth noting that he pronounces it slightly differently from time to time, and that despite any proficiency (quite considerable!) he has with English, there’s still a detectable accent. Is he pronouncing it “correctly”? Sure! Is he pronouncing it correctly for a native English speaker? Debatable.
The most likely answer is probably not a definitive answer, either: in the YYJ offices and teams, there is not likely one agreed-upon pronunciation. It’s just one of those words that probably doesn’t have a single proper and definitive pronunciation. Based on what I know of linguistics and the English language, I’mma go with “fee-nom-ism”. If you’d rather go with something else, I’m certainly not bothered.
My only point really was that of a logic pedant: appeal to authority is not a valid argument. That’s all!
Okay, I feel like I learned that in philosophy :P, but I still believe English is messed up because there aren’t really any rules, and if there is, there is always an exception for it. Which is why I say really anything goes “fee-nom”,“feh-nom”, I’m sure it is correct either way.
