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Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)
- pacaro 6y agoThis is one of those surprisingly useful and obvious things that I'm surprised not to have seen before. Knowledge of (including pronunciation) jargon is a classic gatekeeper In my experience, I'm in the minority in pronouncing sudo as soodoo, the majority seem to say pseudo. OTOH I've never heard anyone say fsck as anything other than f-suck From personal experience at Microsoft the backslash was frequently pronounced "whack" (hence whack whack for unc paths), and the ubiquitous error codes like 0xC0000005 were "c-bazillion-5"
- Daneel_ 6y agoI was a su-dough person until I realise that sudo stands for 'super user do' or 'su do', so I switched to soodoo - it makes a lot more sense that way. f-suck is a new one for me though. I would say F S C K to someone else, but I call it fusk in my head.
- jhot 6y agoI've always said F S check in my head but never said or heard it on conversation. I started my computer journey with msdos so I think chkdsk is to blame for me saying 'check'.
- memetomancer 6y agoI'm for su-dough - to my ear it evokes the martial art Judo which makes some kind of sense considering what it does. On the other hand Soo Doo sounds like a pig farmer's wife calling the swine in for their slop. To my ear ;)
- pony_sheared 6y agoI'm a su-dougher, because "pseudo" reminds me I can be someone else.
- stouset 6y agoI’ve always called it “fusck”.
- jcfields 6y agoThat’s how I hear it in my head, probably from years of reading it as a stand-in for profanity on Slashdot and the like.
- satysin 6y agoYup put me down for "fusck" as well. I am probably inventing memories here but I think it is because whenever I saw a system announce it needed to fsck I would say "oh fuck" in my head (sometimes out loud).
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoI have always “heard” F sick in my head for fsck
- 3131s 6y agoYeah, me also.
- JoshTriplett 6y agoI tend to pronounce fsck as one syllable, like "fisk" without the 'i'.
- lloeki 6y agoNitpick: su is “substitute user” (sometimes switch user), it merely defaults to root. man su: su - run a command with substitute user and group ID As for fsck I moved from F S C K to progressively bind the S and C in a slide of the tongue, which ends up sounding like F-ceek once I’ve eased in the audience with F-(s)ceek(ay) (parentheses get progressively toned down as I speak faster) That or just “FS check”.
- Daneel_ 6y agoYou're correct, of course. I don't know why I remember it as super user.
- notretarded 6y agoBecause that's its most common use - to impersonate as a privileged user - so su quite naturally becomes super user
- jchw 6y agoBecause sudo really was “superuser do” and is unrelated to the UNIX utility “su” (at least by lineage.)
- devenblake 6y agoIn my head I pronounce fsck "fuck" because that's normally what I say when I realize I have to use it. Around people? fs check or filesystem check.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- asveikau 6y agoAlso ex MS and I recall whack. I also heard a story about a server called paddy, so its shares were whack whack paddy whack. Never heard bazillion. But many of us used to memorize a bunch of hexadecimal codes and know the symbolic names based on the visual of the hex digits. After repeat lookups the common ones just stay in your brain without effort. The one you shared looks like STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION.
- danaliv 6y agoI was asked the correct pronunciation of /etc in an interview once. Diabolical, if you ask me.
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago"Sorry, you're not a 'culture fit' here."
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoThere's historical precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- uglycoyote 6y agoI have only ever worked with people who call it etcetera.
- userbinator 6y agoI know a few people who pronounce fsck with what sounds like a combination of 'suck' and the expletive, which naturally leads to phrases like "it's fsck'ing the drive."
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> pseudo I'm originally Italian and my English is now quite good. A very, very common mistake among most "mediterranean" and "romance languages" (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Romanian) people when speaking English is to pronounce ps as in "pissed" without the "i", instead of just the "s" (the "p" is silent), which is the correct way to pronounce it in English. Another very common mistake in my language group is the "gn", as in signal. Correct English is sig-nal [0], while my group usually says it with a different "gn" sound [1]. Well, there's much more, of course, but I wanted to share these two just because, anecdotally, I hear the mistake very often. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOXnmbOJvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOXnmbOJvQ [1]: https://forvo.com/word/segnale/ https://forvo.com/word/segnale/
- oblio 6y agoFor Romanians, we pronounce signal correctly, though. We have "gn" as a sound in Romanian, for example "a răstigni" (to nail to a cross"), we don't change it to "ni". But we do have the same problem as Italians with "pseudo": the "p" is right there, why are you skipping it?!? :-p
- carlmr 6y agoI think the ps thing has nothing to do with romance languages. Germans say it the same way. It's just because English is odd here.
- brmgb 6y ago
- lordnacho 6y ago> Knowledge of (including pronunciation) jargon is a classic gatekeeper Indeed, the best example I can find is LateX. You can tell who's read the first pages of the docs from that.
- politelemon 6y agoTIL: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/17509 https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/17509 > English words like ‘technology’ stem from a Greek root beginning with the letters τεχ...; and this same Greek word means art as well as technology. Hence the name TeX, which is an uppercase form of τεχ. > Insiders pronounce the χ of TeX as a Greek chi, not as an ‘x’, so that TeX rhymes with the word blecchhh. It’s the ‘ch’ sound in Scottish words like loch or German words like ach; it’s a Spanish ‘j’ and a Russian ‘kh’. When you say it correctly to your computer, the terminal may become slightly moist.
- cbm-vic-20 6y agoLikewise, LaTeX isn't pronounced as the rubber derivative, but as "Lah-tecchh" /ˈlɑːtɛx/ (IPA via Wikipedia)
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoFrom your link though, Leslie Lamport disagrees with Knuth (whom I like to pronounce "nuth" but is actually pronounced "ka-nuth"). I'm Greek and I pronounce LaTeX as "LAY-tek". I just tried pronouncing it "LAY-tech" with a Greek "chi" sound ("λέει-τεχ") and I sounded so silly I almost spat my coffee all over my monitor (only "almost" because I wasn't drinking any coffee). Ain't no way I'm calling it that. And note that, being Greek, I can actually pronounce "χ" correctly. Most Native English-speaking folks I've heard trying to do the same sound like they're in immediate need of someone administering the Heimleich manoeuver to them. Btw, I pronounce "Heimlich" with a Greek "χ" also. I bet most native English-speaking folks pronounce it elsewise. Perhaps as "Heimlick".
- matheusmoreira 6y agoI pronounce fsck as f-sick.
- octotoad 6y agoI’ve never heard anyone say “F stab” for fstab.
- Daneel_ 6y agoI say f-stab in my head, but F S tab to others.
- alisonatwork 6y agoI do the same. I also say et cetera in my head but E T C to other people, and soo dough in my head but soo do to others. I wonder how many other people code-switch in this way to try make themselves better understood, when actually we would still understand one another if we just used our internal pronunciation?
- cgriswald 6y agoI pronounce etc in my head as “ets” as if you’re about to say “et cetera” but stopped short. I read etc. in print the same way and have since I was a kid. I suspect that split pronunciation between head and mouth is very common. I do the same thing with some words, like giblet, which in my head has a hard g, but when I say it I say it with a soft g.
- usr1106 6y agoIt has always been F S tab.
- saurik 6y agoFWIW, I have always said "F stab" (for over 25 years now). I doubt I have never even heard anyone else say the term at all, though, so I am a glorious outlier ;P.
- diarrhea 6y agoIt's a file system table, isn't that what it stands for? F S tab reflects that, F stab is super misleading.
- danaliv 6y agoNever heard fsck spelled out. It’s always been /fisk/. I guess that’s the sort of nonsense one should expect from a person who wrongly abhors the great and beautiful emacs. ducks
- schoen 6y agoI'm guessing you mean /fɪsk/ -- almost all -isk words (whisk, disk, risk) are pronounced with /-ɪsk/.
- danaliv 6y agoIndeed - I got lazy with the characters there.
- indigodaddy 6y agoWeird. I've never heard anyone NOT spell out fsck.
- glitchcrab 6y agof-sick over here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago> chmod: as one syllable.. rhymes with 'nod' This is easy to do for many? In my experience, Anglo-Saxons can seldom pronounce “GNU” in one syllable, but they can this?
- danaliv 6y agoYup. It’s /shmod/!
- Daneel_ 6y agoThat's... two syllables.
- danaliv 6y agoIt isn’t. There’s no vowel sound between sh and m. Think schmear. Onset: shm. Nucleus: o. Coda: d. One syllable.
- Daneel_ 6y agoForgive me, but I don't understand how you can pronounce it as one syllable. I would have to pronounce /shmod/ as either /sh-mod/ or /shm-od/, making it two syllables. I'm happy to be corrected, I just physically can't understand how to pronounce it as one syllable.
- koolba 6y agoIt’s pronounced similar to schmaltz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmaltz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmaltz The trick is one continuous motion of pursing your lips, closing and then opening your mouth as you roll the constants together.
- danaliv 6y agoI hear ya. It’s not a terribly common consonant cluster. (In fact I think all English words that start with s[c]hm are Yiddish loanwords, but don’t quote me on that.) Try pushing your lips forward before making any sound, and drawing them back+together as you make the sh sound. It’ll come out as a single shm sound.
- giomasce 6y agoTo me etc is pronounced "etch".
- notatoad 6y agoHeh, that was the only one I disagreed with too, but I always spell it out e-t-c
- bombcar 6y agoFor me it’s less etsy and more et-cee; the sound may be the same but the second is clearly E T C with the first two elided.
- blackfawn 6y agoSince the /etc pronunciation was first in the list, I initially thought this might be some joke list of crazy pronunciations until I saw the rest. Do people really say "etsy" when referring to /etc? I've never ever heard anyone say this. Usually I hear the spelled out E-T-C and occasionally "et cetera" but never "etsy"
- RMPR 6y ago> Do people really say "etsy" when referring to /etc? Nice to meet you. I've been saying that for 5 years now. Since etc is _et caetera_ I read it as _et c..._ hence the pronunciation.
- Daneel_ 6y agoThere are plenty of us out here. etsy all the way.
- kelnos 6y agoAre you British? I (American) have been pronouncing it "etsy" for over 20 years. When I hear something different it's usually from someone who is new to unix and just hasn't learned all the jargon yet.
- 6y ago
- hodgesrm 6y agoMySQL pronunciation can be "My S Q L" or "My Sequel." I think most people in the community probably use the latter, but truthfully most of us don't really care. The "S Q L" vs. "Sequel" split has existed almost as long as SQL itself. The original name for the language was "SEQUEL." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL#History
- saurik 6y agoFWIW, much like a linguistic accent or regional dialect, using "sequel" tends to make you sound more like a Microsoft developer (definitely to people from my generation). This has been merging a bit in the last decade (mostly as the linguistic traditions of subcultures in general have been eroding from Eternal September and an entire generation passing), but it is still notable enough that people bring it up occasionally.
- hodgesrm 6y agoThe MS pronunciation makes sense to me. Microsoft inherited (actually bought) SQL Server from Sybase. At Sybase the pronunciation was 100% "Sequel." I worked there for 7 years and don't ever recall hearing "S Q L."
- brobinson 6y agoI pronounced the individual letters until I called Microsoft support one day and the automated prompts said something like "For Microsoft 'Sequel' Server, press 3".
- exikyut 6y agoNow I'm genuinely curious what the modern equivalent of education by phone menu might be. There's just so much information *everywhere* that we just aren't in isolated little universes anymore.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> what the modern equivalent of education by phone menu might be. Podcasts and video, whether it's official company presentations or not.
- Torwald 6y agoHe is wrong regarding Emacs.
- brixie 6y agoI recently wondered about the best way to pronounce commands of the `[...]ctl` family, which seem to get omitted from most of these lists I come across. I personally now use "cuttle", but am curious what others say (for example, Kubernetes [1] is one notable exception, search "cube control"). [1] https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.9.md#kubectl https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGEL...
- nerdponx 6y agoI say "C T L" as in "system C T L". But I also capitalize command names like Ls so I'm probably out on my own here.
- adamnew123456 6y ago> But I also capitalize command names like Ls so I'm probably out on my own here. Only in written correspondence I assume? Macs are the only system that would let you do that in actual use AFAIK (and if you want to break out of that habit I've got an OS to sell you ;) How did you get into this habit though? Are you an old Lisper by chance?
- nerdponx 6y agoOops, that was unclear. I meant "capitalize the first letter of" and "in written correspondence". I am not an old Lisper, but I am becoming a young-ish one.
- pacaro 6y agoI mostly hear the "cuttle" variant, but with the t/d ambiguity of a lot of american pronunciation it sounds more like "cuddle" to me, and I like that
- ohazi 6y agoioctl - iOctal
- likeclockwork 6y ago
- city41 6y agoI always find these interesting. Like the different pronunciations of `char`*. All these strange words that we only read or type 99% of the time but still come up with some kind of pronunciation in our heads. * I've heard "char" like "charbroiled", "care", "car" and some people always just say "character"
- dschuetz 6y agoI've heard techies saying char with ch in "chair". I was terrified.
- indigodaddy 6y agoAuthor mentions L S as an alternate/different way they've heard ls pronounced? What other way would there be? List I guess?
- elric 6y ago"List" is probably the most common, but I've heard people pronounce it as "else".
- adyavanapalli 6y agoOn a somewhat related note, I'd been internally pronouncing `reflog` in `git reflog` as REE-FLOG for the longest time. It wasn't until I finally needed to use it that REF-LOG made a lot more sense!
- droptablemain 6y agoI once got into a big office conflict regarding "var." (rhymes with "far" vs rhymes with "air") I do at least feel vindicated now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- choeger 6y agofstab should be f s tab, IMO. I mean it does mean "file system table", no?
- aksss 6y agoI’ve always said lib as libe, as in library.
- gorgoiler 6y ago- ifconfig: eye eff config (not “iff-config”) - “#!”: hash bang (not “shub-ang”) - sh: shuh like le as in le monde (not “ess ayche”) - tcl: tickle One of the hardest for me though is on a different topic to pronunciation. What name would you give to a variable that keeps track of the current working directory? What name did bash use for this variable? Answers (for me): - pwd: is “print working directory” - $PWD: is “pcurrent working directory”, the P is silent.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoI think of pwd as “present working directory”, but I have no idea where I got this from. And, it’s always a shebang line :)
- kps 6y ago‘pwd’ comes from Multics, where it abbreviates ‘print_wdir’.
- ghayes 6y agoFor me, two of those would be `shebang` (#!) and `S H` (ess eich). It's nice to coalesce around pronunciations, but we should also accept that people will choose different dialects.
- likeclockwork 6y agoExactly! We all have accents, we don't even pronounce English words the same way as each other.
- Daneel_ 6y agoAgreed on hashbang. It's melifluous to say "hash bang bin bash" - ahhhh :)
- mlmartin 6y agoI always say 'bin' as 'bine' in relation to the folder. This is a hill I will die on. It's short for binary. And a 'bin' is where you put your rubbish, not your hard work.
- asxd 6y agoThis kind of flipped a switch in my brain, that makes a lot more sense than the "trash bin" pronunciation. However, I will continue saying "bin" because old habits die hard and "bine" just sounds wrong to my brain for no good reason :)
- aksss 6y agoIt sounds dangerously like “bind”, so that might introduce some confusion in a circle that is accustomed to “bin”.
- asxd 6y agoI'm mostly a casual linux user, so honestly asking, why is sounding like "bind" dangerous? -- edit: A quick search turned up the `bind` command to bind a name to a socket. That makes sense.
- aksss 6y agoI was thinking more about the bind dns server when I made the comment, but yeah. Just thinking that verbally referring to the “bine” folder might cause confusion in certain contexts, where “bin” pronunciation avoids it entirely.
- defaultcompany 6y agoAlso BIND is the Berkeley internet name daemon aka DNS server.
- doctorphil 6y agoDo you also call /lib 'libe'? Or are you okay with 'lib' as it's not conflicting with other meanings?
- teekert 6y agofstab pronounced F Stab, obviously a joke website left over from April first.
- electricant 6y ago"Joe said "cat proc cpuinfo". Scott wasn't getting it so Joe said "no.. no, type cat slash proc slash cpuinfo" and eventually got on the keyboard himself." This part really resonated with me. I always find it hard to tell commands to people. Anyway I never reach for their keyboard. I try to take the blame myself for not spelling out the command correcty, this way they don't feel mistaken and take a defensive stance.
- cortesoft 6y agoI think this is also about the level of knowledge about what you are doing... if Scott didn't know about /proc/cpuinfo, it is more likely he wouldn't know to put the slashes.
- jdeaton 6y agoOne of my professors who taught an OS class pronounced fsck as "eff suck".
- BossingAround 6y agoI found there is this "pride in the correct pronunciation" in the opensource community. It seems to be a signal of a group membership and a creed validator. Who cares though? Why does "correct pronunciation" matter? Linux is nowadays used by many more non-native English speakers who will pronounce it very differently. This attempt at correcting others seems like gatekeeping and, to me personally, feels like a very anti-inclusive thing to do. Tangentially, the fact that some of the pronunciation is so non-intuitive (e.g. /etc -> etsy) should be a bug, not a feature and pride point. Can you imagine if you reported that a workflow is non-intuitive in a piece of SW and the devs told you "we know, cool, right?!"
- dschuetz 6y agoJeez, how did you get from correct pronunciation to anti-inclusive?! Most people just want to know what you are talking about when you say libe or cat slash prots slash mem in fo or worse. Nothing is more infuriating when people start using wrong words in a 10h telco instead of agreed upon vocabulary, which includes the correct pronunciation! Scratch correct. It's the agreed upon pronunciation we all ought to use when working together.
- KineticLensman 6y ago> Nothing is more infuriating when people start using wrong words in a 10h telco instead of agreed upon vocabulary Totally agree. This is also why doctors say 'pancreatic islets' rather than 'pink wibbly bit'. Using precise technical language does create a barrier to entry but this is a side-effect of the primary purpose of precise technical language: to allow practitioners to communicate accurately and unambiguously.
- tpoacher 6y agoInteresting example, since doctors notoriously mispronounce stuff all the time. Especially names.
- MiguelX413 6y agoCan you not understand that the complaint is about the “correct” pronunciation being unintuitive?
- moonstruck 6y ago"emacs: rhymes with junk"
- phist_mcgee 6y agoGottem
- ggm 6y agoEtsy
- JoshTriplett 6y ago> /var: rhymes with jar While I've heard people pronounce it that way, given that "var" is short for "variable" or "varying" (as in capable of changing), I've primarily heard people pronounce it as the first syllable of "variable": vair. (I have also, rarely, heard people pronounce "variable" as though the first syllable rhymes with "far".)
- kergonath 6y agoIsn’t there a US/UK difference? It seems to me that English people pronounce this closer to (though not exactly) a as in “jar” than to e as in “very”, though I think I’ve heard both ends of the spectrum. To my (admittedly non-native) ears, an open and long sound is strange in such a word, and the closed a sounds better. Same with i versus ai in bin or lib.
- poxwole 6y agoEmacs is the one true editor.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y agoI pronounce chroot as "change root". I pronounce "chown" as just "own" with a "ch" sound in front though.
- snorrah 6y agooh god /etc as ‘etsy’? no way. never heard it called that, don’t want to (british)
- BossingAround 6y agoFWIW, it's very common in my company. That said, I think if you came to interview with me and you'd say "e t c," that'd be totally fine. If you said "et cetera," I'd be confused for a bit, but personally, I wouldn't care. Same with curl. Is it "curl" or "c URL"? Who cares...
- glitchcrab 6y ago100% agree (also British). Been working with Kubernetes full time for 2 years now and I still hate 'etsyd'
- colordrops 6y agoI've heard multiple pronunciations of "kubernetes" Koo-burr-net-ease koo-burr-neet-ease Cube-burr-neet-ease
- OJFord 6y agoI've probably never had to say it aloud, and haven't come across that before, internally I've read 'et cetera d' for sure. That said, 'etsy-dee' is somehow better to me than 'etsy', since it's like 'et C.D.' which makes some sort of sense. (You could of course make the same argument for 'etsy', it's just that nobody reads 'etc.' as 'et see', it's always 'et cetera'.)
- kelnos 6y agoProbably an Americanism? I'm American and I've been calling it 'etsy' since the late 90s. I hear 'E T C' and 'et cetera' on occasion, but the speaker is usually someone new to unix.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 6y ago
- ggm 6y agoIts "tump" not temp.
- ggm 6y agoBut usr is user
- ggm 6y agoVar rhymes with char.
- csala 6y agolol at the last tip (⌐■_■)
- oblio 6y agoSpeaking of silly pronunciations, you silly native English speakers :-p Character/karacter but char/char? What is wrong with your language? :-(
- politelemon 6y agoWhat can I say, we're a var-ied bunch
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> What is wrong with your language? It's an insane amalgamation of other languages with occasional attempts at consistency that actually make it worse. Imagine a library written in C+asm, then with parts grafted on written in idiomatic Pascal, then the whole mess ported to Java without changing any naming or structure. Every other method has a different namingConvention, if_notHybrid, to say nothing of other style aspects or the parts that still aren't really object-aware. English is old/middle english (naturally mutated over time) with chunks of French and German grafted on, bits of latin and ancient Greek tacked on...
- oblio 6y agoWell, that's an explanation, but it's not really excuse. Other languages have had reforms and there is no natural language that I know of that doesn't have major influences from at least 3 or 4 different languages.
- pindab0ter 6y agoEnglish has had it's share of attempted reforms. This attempt shows examples of perfectly fine reforms when you think about it. The proposed spelling is most certainly fine once you're used to it or if it's all you've ever known. But I have to laf at the thaut of spelling words like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#20th_century_onward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
- politelemon 6y agoAnother one in the same area, Ubuntu. I mostly hear ubuntu but I'll sometimes hear it called you-buhn-too https://askubuntu.com/a/34987/26436 https://askubuntu.com/a/34987/26436
- nethunters 6y agoConfirmation from the main man himself for the pronunciation of Linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c39QPDTDdXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c39QPDTDdXU
- layer8 6y agoThat’s actually a disconfirmation. He doesn’t pronounce the second syllable as a short “i”, but as a short “u”. The problem is that a short “u” sound is almost nonexistent in English, so native English speakers will pronounce it differently. Edit: Actually the closest in English is probably “linnooks” — “lin” as in “linen” and “nooks” as in “nooks and crannies”.
- Lio 6y agoI work with someone that says "wha" for WAR file instead of war (What is it good for!). Drives me nuts.
- cbm-vic-20 6y agoMove out of Boston, then.
- utf_8x 6y agoI've never heard anyone pronounce /etc as "etsy" or fstab as "F stab"...
- jlgaddis 6y agoOn the other hand, I've pronounced /etc as "etsy" ("slash etsy", usually) for, I dunno, 25 years or more. NFI where I first heard it pronounced like that, though.
- satysin 6y agoNeither had I, until yesterday. Weird timing for this post to pop up. I have always called it either 'slash eee-tee-cee' or 'slash etcetera' however yesterday I was watching a video of Andreas working on SerenityOS and he was implementing /etc/shadow and referred to it as 'et-see' which made me think I've never heard it pronounced like that before (or if I have I have long forgotten it). I kinda like it though.
- Fnoord 6y agoI always thought the correct way was "attic" or "et cetera", but a few years ago I learned it is etsy.
- CamouflagedKiwi 6y agoI've heard "f stab" a few times, although it's always been somewhat tongue in cheek. I've not heard it as a genuine misunderstanding of the canonical pronunciation.
- icedchai 6y agoStrange. I've been calling /etc "etsy" for 25 years.
- qwantim1 6y agoLinus pronouncing Linux: https://youtu.be/5IfHm6R5le0 https://youtu.be/5IfHm6R5le0
- hibbelig 6y agoIs etsy really the recommended pronunciation? I say et cetera.
- bombcar 6y agoIt's what I use - but it's a degradation of E T C "ea tea sea" where you combine the first two to "et sea". At least that's how I believe I came around to it. Seeing it spelled as etsy confused me at first.
- colordrops 6y agoI used to pronounce "warez" as "juarez" instead of "wares".
- kuroguro 6y agoI still pronounce it that way!
- tinus_hn 6y agoIsn’t there an audio clip that comes with the kernel that says ‘Hi, my name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Linux’?
- fctorial 6y agohttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg
- antonyh 6y agoCommon perhaps but Etsy would be confusing in the modern era. Etsy is a web site. I learned C with VI over twenty years ago, and was taught to call it ‘vie’ rhymes with ‘by’. Always wanted to call it ‘six’. As for Emacs rhymes with ‘junk’, GTFO. Either this is a joke or a very unexpected pronunciation that I can’t fathom. I say ‘eee-mac-sss’.
- ajdude 6y agoI’m 31 years old and have been using Linux most of my life. A few of my friends and people at work do too, but this is the first time I’ve heard /etc pronounced as etsy. It’s always been “etcetera” for me. This led me to look up the history of that directory: “ But people encountered a situation to keep some files which can be a config file or a data file or a socket file or some other files. So they implemented a folder to keep all these files in it and they named it as /etc(As said earlier etcetera). As time passed the meaning of this folder has changed but not the name “etc”. Now /etc folder means a central location for all your configuration files are located and this can be treated as nerve centre of your Linux/Unix machine.” (from https://www.linuxnix.com/linux-directory-structure-explainedetc-folder/ https://www.linuxnix.com/linux-directory-structure-explained... ) If that’s truly the case, I’m curious how it got from “etcetera” to “etsy”
- majewsky 6y agoI pronounce it "etsy". "et cetera" was never an option for me because I learned that it's short for "editable text configuration". (Also "et cetera" just doesn't make much sense. If anything, /usr is "et cetera".)
- zerocrates 6y ago"editable text configuration" has to be a backronym, right? Not that it really matters, of course. "Etsy" has the value of brevity when speaking, but I can't bring myself to feel natural saying it. None of the other options sound great either.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- canjobear 6y agoIt’s slash proc here https://youtu.be/Fow7iUaKrq4 https://youtu.be/Fow7iUaKrq4
- Xophmeister 6y agoThe first (and, so far, only) time I heard someone use “etsy”, I misheard it as “ansi” and looked a bit confused as I’d never heard of /ansi before. I usually pronounce it as “et cet”. Needless to say, the path didn’t exist, which heightened my embarrassment!
- gmfawcett 6y agoI think it's polite to introduce a path with a leading "slash". As in "cat slash etsy hosts" rather than "cat etsy hosts". It helps the listener to switch modes. I knew one old-timer who pronounced TTY as "titty" and didn't mean it as a joke. It was clearly how he was taught to say the word. Perhaps that's a good argument for not blindly sticking to traditions.
- wcchandler 6y agoIf you spend more than a day fighting with dracut and initrd, you'll start pronouncing it "any turd" as you'll want any turd that works that can get the system to boot.
- cryptomeme 6y agoBut how did you pronounce "Linux" when reading the title of this post? Lih-nucks Lie-nucks Lee-nooks
- lsferreira42 6y agoWhat about nginx pronunciation? It's Engine X, kinda hard to guess.