Peri·

The greenish coloured gem peridot is the birthstone for the month of August.  Looking at this word I feel slightly uncomfortable.  It's one of those words that I've never actually heard anyone say out loud and the pronunciation isn't immediately obvious.  My first instinct is to pronounce it the "French way" that would be something like pear-a-doe, but there also seems to be an equally valid looking pronunciation, pear-a-dot.  For some reason the "dot" ending seems a bit harsh but if that's the correct way to pronounce peridot then I'm not going to argue.

Obviously it's time to enlist the help of the internet for what I thought would give me a consensus.  The first result is a YouTube video that gives the pronunciation of pear-a-dot.  Well that was simple enough.  Then I continued to scroll down to the comments (not always the safest thing to do without losing a few IQ points) and found the people there disagreeing, with some preferring the pear-a-doe pronunciation.  It appeared I had some more work to do.

Wikipedia lists both pronunciations and looking to see if there was some more information I headed to the talk page.  Now I don't normally frequent Wikipedia talk pages, but what I found could be called the polar opposite of YouTube comment threads.  There was a fairly long and verbose discussion about the pronunciation of peridot which was strangely amusing to read.  After reading through it all I determined that both pronunciations are acceptable and it can depend on where you live or if you're a gem tradesman.

If you would like to trust what was posted near the top of the talk page,

Many dictionaries put the "pear-a-dot" pronunciation first, before "pear-a-doe". Some only have the "pear-a-dot" listed, for example "Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language" is very definite and lists only one form, "per' i dot'".  Most gem and jewelery tradesmen use "pear-a-doe", and some are very definite in calling the "-dot" form as incorrect. If you believe dictionaries and encyclopedias, however, you have to conclude they are being near-sighted.  Peridot was first mined in quantity in the U.S. in the area of Peridot, Arizona. The name of that town is pronounced "pear-a-dot".

 Cool I guess.