HOW TO PRONOUCE 'MUBI'
Maybe my type-o in ‘Pronounce’ will start another topic!
with a smarmy British accent: mooobee
For kicks, make it an umlaut.
It’s always Americans who say ‘British’ accent. There’s no such thing!
There’s Londonish accent and Scottish accent, and a lot of accents range in between. I think it would be better to use the scottish accent to say Mubi.
In all fairness, many of us Brits refer to an ‘American’ accent. Even more preposterous.
Rhymes with: boobie, scooby, doobie as in Mubi scooby-do. Catchy, isn’t it – in terms of rhyming possibilities.
As I was smoking on my doobie,
I spied a place that sent my loopy.
‘Twas once a site of droll auteurs
Who’ve been chucked out, on their rears.
It’s now fun and games with groovy movies
So come join in, now don’t be boobies.
Mubi is in and the auteurs is out.
No need to whine, or ball or shout.
This brave new world is here to stay.
So let’s all cheer this happy day!
When all’s said and done, it’s still the same
For really folks, what’s in a name?
It’s now Mubi this and Mubi that,
So Scooby Doo, don’t be a brat.
Let’s chill out and watch a mubi
Pardon me, I meant a movie.
Just call me Scooby – rhymes with MUBI!
Sorry, folks. I’m just part of the warm-up act until the wizard of this site shows…
It should be pronounced as mew-bai as in the Greek letter ‘u’ and bai as in Mumbai.
It pays tribute to the beginning of western civilization and dramatic form (starting in Greece) as well as its future (ending in India and Bollywood).
Since ubai would have been too difficult for the masses, Efe went with mubi.
the i sound should be said like 9:09 of this clip :O(
Well, as we await Efe, and fearing to destroy the nice rhyme above, I think Hopelessly Addicted maybe on to something. Let’s say HA (Hmmm, that abbreviates as ha so maybe this is a put on) tells us the term Mu-bi breaks down into mu – pronounced mew, and bi – pronounced bye. Maybe this is correct. I have done a bit of research to try to get to the bottom of this.
Mu is the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet, so I think Dimitris might be behind this name change after all. We all know how he wants this site to support less mainstream movies – I mean mubis.
It also has mathematical connotations.
Mu used as mathematical & scientific symbol
It could also be short for the elementary particle the muon.
But I think Efe was thinking of Mu as in the fabled lost continent of Mu. Surely, the auteurs is now a lost continent, so that might fit in with the meaning. Mu then arises like Atlantis, to take its rightful place.
Bi, pronouced like pi or like bi-sect – which we all remember from geometry. It could stand for bi-sexual or bi-polar, which might have a personal reference for Efe and the staff, but I don’t want to get into that line of enquiry.
Bi is a symbol for bismuth: a heavy brittle diamagnetic trivalent metallic element (resembles arsenic and antimony chemically). This might work if you think of the arsenic implication. This new term is an arsenic – that is, a poison – for the old term the auteurs , so that could be the meaning.
I think it might refer to another meaning for BI (which, is after all, capitalized in the icon): BI as Business Intelligence. Since we are aware that the original intent of the new name was to expand the members, hence expanding the business potential, this might be the reasons for its inclusion.
If any of this is true, I am sad because then Mubi no longer rhymes with boobie and my rhyme scheme above is defunct.
Your intrepid investigator – RLS
He’s gonna get it eventually . . .
^ This is why I love this guy. You can turn a discussion of anything into something interesting.
I think each letter should be pronounced separately like IMDB. Em, You, Be, Eye. Much better than boobi, or I mean moobi.
Efe recently in the Why Did We Change Our Name to MUBI thread – “What does MUBI stand for? Nothing.”
OK, I now think I get it. Efe is using the MU in MUBI in the Zen sense.
As wiki relates, Mu is a Japanese/Korean word used as a term in Zen meaning roughly ‘no meaning’ or ‘nothing’ – roughly translated as “no”, “none”, “null”, “without”, and “no meaning”.
Just re-reading the important chapter on Ozu in Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Films. Here, Schrader details how Ozu uses the Zen concept of mu in the sense of ‘emptiness’. We now see how MUBI relates to Zen transcendentalism. I am beginning to realize the deep significance of this new MU-bi reality.
It is deep…like a Zen koan. Contrary to some thinking, mu here is not a Zen equivalent to what a cow says – although it could be. Embrace the mu in MUBI.
That’s very well spotted and precisely why it can never have any meaning. And of course Efe and his deep-thinking chums mastered this. However for the purposes of international cohesion, i would suggest it be pronounced a la Chief Inspector Clouseau (Sellers of course), with a delicate hint of Papua New Guinea thrown in for good measure. Under no circumstances can it be pronounced with an English accent cos as everyone knows the English have no more flair for languages than do the citizens of the USA, safe a tiny pocket in the Derbyshire peak district that was once the home of wallabies
I throw this out to noone in particular but to the great unbounded space that is the internet
Yes, well spotted ole chap. RLS, The mu may be a negative or no meaning word, however 2 negative mu’s combine nicely to form the positive MuuMuu, by attaching to each mu an additional u! Thus love for the free flowing MuuMuu translated nicely to the Sony PlayStation Pocket MuuMuu !?!? How that lonely mu grew!
Excellent job, RLS!
- HA.
What is the plural of “MUBI?”
MUBII
Joseph Wallace
I have no idea why the sudden change of name. I really liked ‘The Auteurs’ as that also gave a clear direction of the films listed.
Now it’s ‘MUBI’.
One question: does it rhyme with ‘Movie’ or with ‘Dubai’? I am guessing the first – but then why not write ‘MUBY’? Is that just too similar to ‘Moby’?
Does anyone know why the change?