From: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2020 08:05:55 +1100 (EST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2002050752430.33501@aneurin.horsfall.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200204201453.ebeaabon26vbgfle@localhost.localdomain>
On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>>> Wikipedia writes that `ed' would be pronounced ``ee-dee'' (like
>>> ``vee-eye''), is that what you english speakers do?
>
> Certainly not. When one sees a command name that duplicates a
> frequently-used diminituve of a common name, the brain is going to
> select that preferentially.
Being British/Australian, I say "ee-dee" and "vee-eye", as they are
not really English words. Similarly, I say "ee-max" etc.
> Naming your Unix command "mike" and expecting people to pronounce it
> "em-eye-kay-ee" is hopeless.
In that case I would pronounce it as "myke".
> In English, thanks to the Great Vowel Shift and other developments that
> differentiated vowel pronunciation from the continent a few hundred
> years ago, trailing "I"s tend to be pronounced long (as in "eye")--but
> they also tend to be rare. They occur in proper names like Lodi,
> California and Bondi, Australia (which Americans sometimes mis-pronounce
> anyway, perhaps influenced by Spanish). A word that looks borrowed from
> Latin, Greek, or Spanish will often get back its "-ee" sound for a
> trailing "i", but the two-letter command names beloved of the Unix
> pioneers offer no etymological hints.
You should hear Americans pronounce the Australian cities of Brisbane
and Melbourne. Also, Wagga Wagga totally throws them (it's pronounced
simly as "Wogguh" here).
> I had to teach myself Unix in the early days and so I wound up with some
> idiolectal variants that people consider amusing or objectionable:
OK...
> chroot: cheroot (like the cigar)
> chown: rhymes with "clown"
> chmod: rhymes with "god" or "scrod" (a kind of fish), and resists the
> introduction of a vowel into the leading consonant cluster as
> much as possible--it's an ugly one!
OK so far...
> creat: Crete (hic Rhodus, hic salta!)
cree-AT.
> fuser: fuser (like the component of a laser printer--not "eff-user"; eff
> that)
eff-user, so take that :-)
> groff: Groff (like the surname, not "jee-roff")
jee-roff.
> troff: trough (but nroff I pronounce the accepted way)
tee-roff. And, err, how would you pronounce "nroff"?
> (And did people really say "dee-eye-tee-roff" for "ditroff"?)
Likely "dee-eye-troff".
> There are a couple of others that I started out pronouncing in a
> nonstandard way, but once I started attending conferences, I
> assimilated:
>
> Linux: originally "lye-nucks", now "linn-ucks"
Lee-nux.
> Debian: originally "Dee-bee-un", now "Deb-ee-un"
du-BEE-un.
-- Dave
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-02-04 21:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 82+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-01-08 7:39 [TUHS] screen editors Thomas Paulsen
2020-01-08 15:58 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-01-08 23:41 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-09 1:43 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-08 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-08 22:01 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-17 23:38 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-18 0:07 ` Ryan Casalino
2020-01-18 23:02 ` greg travis
2020-01-10 8:13 ` markus schnalke
2020-01-10 8:17 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-01-11 19:58 ` markus schnalke
2020-01-11 20:54 ` Derek Fawcus
2020-01-11 21:27 ` Henry Bent
2020-02-04 8:40 ` Sijmen J. Mulder
2020-02-04 20:14 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) G. Branden Robinson
2020-02-04 21:05 ` Dave Horsfall [this message]
2020-02-04 21:52 ` Derek Fawcus
2020-02-04 23:27 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 3:34 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-05 9:49 ` Angelo Papenhoff
2020-02-05 11:40 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 11:43 ` Brantley Coile
2020-02-05 10:58 ` Ralph Corderoy
2020-02-05 11:45 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 8:45 ` arnold
2020-02-05 13:35 ` Clem cole
2020-02-05 16:11 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
2020-02-05 16:16 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 17:05 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-05 17:09 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-08 3:31 ` Ronald Natalie
2020-02-08 4:19 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11 1:16 ` George Michaelson
2020-02-11 6:38 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 20:26 ` David Arnold
2020-02-05 19:37 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 19:57 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 20:50 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-05 21:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-05 21:59 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-05 22:22 ` Ed Carp
2020-02-06 2:43 ` Dan Cross
2020-02-06 3:00 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-06 5:20 ` Vincenzo Nicosia
2020-02-06 14:54 ` Richard Salz
2020-02-06 15:10 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas Lars Brinkhoff
2020-02-06 20:14 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06 20:20 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-06 19:55 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06 21:48 ` Michael Parson
2020-02-06 23:56 ` Michael Parson
2020-02-06 22:17 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-07 0:21 ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-07 0:27 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-07 0:54 ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas Arthur Krewat
2020-02-07 1:00 ` Richard Salz
2020-02-07 5:26 ` Peter Jeremy
2020-02-07 4:31 ` [TUHS] finger usage (was: pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)) Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07 5:07 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-07 5:39 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-07 21:39 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07 16:14 ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-07 22:37 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-07 4:23 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-06 2:23 ` [TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors) Dan Cross
2020-02-06 2:31 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 19:08 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-05 21:01 ` Nemo
2020-02-05 22:06 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-01-10 13:41 ` [TUHS] screen editors / machine load Mike Markowski
2020-01-10 13:56 ` Otto Moerbeek
2020-01-10 15:00 ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-01-10 15:48 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-10 22:18 ` Adam Thornton
2020-01-11 0:30 ` Christopher Browne
2020-01-10 15:31 ` [TUHS] screen editors Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-10 16:04 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-10 17:10 ` Dan Cross
2020-01-10 17:18 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-01-18 1:55 ` Michael Parson
2020-01-10 15:58 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
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