From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/52224 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Lloyd Zusman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: [OT] Of the meaning of GNUS Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 10:20:46 -0400 Organization: FreeBSD/Linux Hippopotamus Preserve Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <65orpvqy.fsf@asfast.com> <84n0i2etnm.fsf@lucy.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1052057982 12640 80.91.224.249 (4 May 2003 14:19:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 4 May 2003 14:19:42 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M767@lists.math.uh.edu Sun May 04 16:19:40 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19CKL6-0003Hj-00 for ; Sun, 04 May 2003 16:19:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19CKMH-0005qv-00; Sun, 04 May 2003 09:20:53 -0500 Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com ([64.157.176.121]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19CKMD-0005qq-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sun, 04 May 2003 09:20:49 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 54358 invoked by alias); 4 May 2003 14:20:48 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 54353 invoked from network); 4 May 2003 14:20:48 -0000 Original-Received: from unknown (HELO asfast.net) (sl3w00@216.182.10.250) by sclp3.sclp.com with SMTP; 4 May 2003 14:20:48 -0000 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) (uid 0) by asfast.net with local; Sun, 04 May 2003 10:20:46 -0400 Original-To: ding@gnus.org X-Face: "!ga1s|?LNLE3MeeeEYs(%LIl9q[xV9!j4#xf4!**BFW_ihlOb;:Slb>)vy>CJM ( =?iso-8859-1?q?Kai_Gro=DFjohann's_message_of?= "Sun, 04 May 2003 15:19:25 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) Emacs/21.3 (berkeley-unix) Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:52224 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:52224 kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes: > Lloyd Zusman writes: > >> In English, the word "gnu" (meaning "wildebeest") can be pronounced with >> a silent "g", so that it sounds exactly the same as "new". Therefore, >> using that convention, "Gnus" would be pronounced like "news". Since >> Gnus was originally created as a usenet newsreader, that's a very >> appropriate name. > > I understand that the G is not silent, says Lars. Check "gnu" in an English dictionary. I looked in several, and in all cases, the "g" is silent. The first pronunciation is "noo", and the second one is "nyoo" (as if the "gn" were reversed to "ng", and the "g" turned into a glide). Of course, this is in reference to the wildebeest, not the Free Software Foundation's acronym. And while Lars is certainly an authority on the pronunciation of "Gnus", I recall when it first came out (even before Umeda Masanobu took over its development), and back then, the pronunciation of "Gnu" seemed to alternate pretty much on a 50-50 basis between a silent and a hard "g" (those were the days when the only gnu thing out there was gnu emacs). I believe that the "official" pronunciation of the FSF acronym had a hard "g", but that didn't stop thousands of people from pronouncing that "g" silently back then. But the original question had to do with the reason for the trailing "s" in the name "Gnus". And as we've discussed, it was to make the word a rhyme (or a homonym, if you subscribe to the silent-g-Gnu-acronym theory) for the word "news". -- Lloyd Zusman ljz@asfast.com