From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: vasco@icpnet.pl (Andrzej Popielewicz)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:41:19 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Unix, eunuchs?
In-Reply-To: <874pz21gwa.fsf@stella.c0t0d0s0.de>
References: <874pz21gwa.fsf@stella.c0t0d0s0.de>
Message-ID: <44840A4F.1060005@icpnet.pl>

Michael Welle napisał(a):

>Hi,
>
>last week a work mate told us a tale about how Unix came to its
>name. He believes that Unix is named after the term eunuch (a
>homophone of (to?) unix in english language). One can see Unix as a
>  
>
Now, that You know where the name unix comes from(see my previous post),
there still is a *funny* coincidence in pronounciation of both words.

In Oxford American Dictionary

eunuch is pronounced as "yoo-nuk" (not all symbols reproduced)
unit is "yoo-nit"
unique is "yoo-neek"

In Webster English Language Dictionary

eunuch is "'yunek"
unit is "'yunet"
unique is "yu'nek,yu'nik"

You can notice, that unix , more similar to unit or unique will be 
pronounced differently(?).

It suggests , that although for us foreigners the difference is hard to 
be distinguished, but perhaps Americans and Englishmen can hear the 
subtle difference above shown in the pronounciation(or perhaps not all). 
I suspect , that if the pronounciation were be same many people would 
have noticed it before.

It is clear , that opinion of American/English linguistic/language 
specialist would be neccesarry.

Andrzej