[Corpora-List] medication pronunciations

[Rob Malouf]

There are very strict regulatory constraints on the names that  
pharmaceutical manufacturers can use for new medications.  Among other  
things, names can't sound too much like an existing brand name or a  
familiar word.  Pharm companies put a lot of work and expense into  
choosing names, and I know that at least some of them use a corpus of  
existing brand names to search for possible phonetic conflicts. I  
don't know where they get their pronunciation data from, but if they  
collect the corpora themselves, then they're not likely to make the  
available, unfortunately.  The FDA might have such a database of their  
own, to help evaluate new proposals.

Another place to look is in training materials for pharmacists.  Like  
these:

http://sayitrite.com/
http://db.bookdev.com/ibj/dbwks?-db=ibj_bookjacket.fp5&-lay=all&-format=default.php&-op=bw&shortname===ripepe&-find

---
Rob Malouf <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages
San Diego State University


On Mar 29, 2008, at 3:21 PM, Angus Grieve-Smith wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, Dr DJ Hatch wrote:
>
>> Mike Maxwell and Lucian Galescu  may well have just offered the most
>> persuasive argument in favour of literacy I¹ve come across.
>
> 	To me it sounds like the most persuasive argument against  
> trademarking and branding that I've seen.  The problem wouldn't  
> exist if the drug companies put enough effort into pronouncability  
> and auditory distinctiveness, and didn't find it necessary to  
> differentiate their own product so dramatically from their  
> competitors'.
>
> 					-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> 					grvsmth at panix.com_______________________________________________
> Corpora mailing list
> Corpora at uib.no
> http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora


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