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Replace the caffeine with Diphenylmethylsulfinylacetamide?(Modafinil)



Serious question: Can anyone pronounce a compound name that long in practice/conversation? Is there a specific naming rule?


It looks intimidating but there's a very much countable set of possible sub-units that makes up those words.

With enough organic chem experience, pronouncing and grokking structure from a name becomes second nature.

In my head it immediately becomes chopped up into understandable units: "di phenyl methyl sulfinyl acetamide"


There is more than one naming rule for organic compounds. The standardized one is IUPAC. That is to say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_nomenclature_of_organic_...

IUPAC is a standards body; that is their nomenclature.

From an IUPAC name, you can work out the molecular structure but IUPAC names are often longer than older names for the same compounds.


There are chemical naming conventions, though I certainly couldn't describe them in detail. But yeah, I can usually pronounce such things if occasion calls for it. One simply has to be familiar with all of the common morphemes for different common bits of chemical structures, and read them off like a sequence of separate words that incidentally happen to have had the spaces removed.


Germans?


No one would ever use that terminology in practice/conversation.


You’ve never met any pharmacists then?




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