How to Pronounce Economics

You’ve probably spent countless hours watching mainstream financial news networks and trying how to pronounce economics to keep up with the latest economic developments. In other words, you know that the economy isn’t exactly the most fun topic to talk about. As a result, it probably hasn’t helped that every time you see or hear the word “economics,” your mind immediately jumps to a grade school test on the subject. Well, you’re in luck. You don’t have to be an economist to understand what’s going on in the world of finance. In fact, you don’t even need to speak the language to learn how to pronounce “economics.” You just need to know how the word is generally used. So, what is economics?

What is Economics?

First things first: what is economics? The short answer is, “It’s that thing you learned in school that you don’t really understand.” The long answer is going to be a little more complicated, but we’ll get there soon enough. Before we start, though, it’s important to understand the difference between economics and etymology. Though both come from the Greek word οἰκονομία (oikonomía, “housekeeping”), etymology is the study of words while economics is the study of wealth and how it is created.

How to Pronounce Economics

The first step to pronouncing economics is to understand how it’s spelled. To help get us started, here’s a table showing the various ways the word can be written and how to pronounce them:

The word “economics” comes from the Greek oikonomia, which itself comes from Oikos (“house”) and remain (“to manage”). The Greek term, therefore, translates as “housekeeping”—i.e., the act of managing a household. While it is possible to claim that one’s knowledge of economics is limited to what one learned in high school, accurate comprehension of the field requires a more in-depth knowledge of a variety of subjects. Consequently, in popular usage, the term “economics” has been diluted to refer to any sort of financial or commercial knowledge that is beyond a person’s level of expertise.

Is Economics Hard to Pronounce?

No, economics isn’t particularly hard to pronounce. The only tricky part is the second syllable: “nomu.” As with many words with two syllables, it’s common to shorten it to “nee.” So, you may have heard people saying “nomics” or even “nom.” Those pronunciations aren’t wrong, but they aren’t exactly right, either. The best way to think of the word is with a combination of the two, which we’ll call “nom-u-ic.”

The third syllable, “-ics,” comes from the Greek “-ikos.” So, when people say “nom-u-ic,” they’re essentially saying “domestic,” which is derived from the Greek word νἰκονομία (“nomos,” “law, custom, habit”). So, when you say “nom-u-ic,” you’re saying “law of habit.”

As you can see, there’s really nothing to worry about when it comes to how to pronounce economics. As with most words in English, you’ll be able to pronounce them correctly with a little bit of practice.

3 Ways o Pronounce Economics When You Don’t Speak the Language

If you’re an English speaker but haven’t had much experience with economics, you might be wondering how to pronounce it when you don’t speak the language. Fortunately, there are three ways to pronounce economics when you don’t speak the language. We’ll discuss each in turn.

The first way to pronounce economics is to simply read the word as you would any other word. For example, if you’re an American, you might read “economic” as “ee-nom-ic.” If you’re from the UK, you might read it as “ay-nomic.” Either way, you’re pronouncing the word as it is spelled.

The second way to pronounce economics when you don’t speak the language is to think of the Greek τέως (“téōs”), which means “science.” So, if you don’t speak Greek, you could just think of “economic” as “economic science.”

The third way to pronounce economics when you don’t speak the language is to think of it as “comics.” You may have encountered this pronunciation before when you were learning how to say “biology,” “geography,” and other words with “nom-” in them.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s really no reason to feel intimidated when it comes to learning how to pronounce economics. The only real challenge is to remember that the word is pronounced “nom-u-ic,” not “noo-math.” With a little bit of practice, you’ll be able to talk about the economy in no time.