4 ms·
It is for the same reason that anyone ever nudges anyone else about pronunciation, spelling, or grammar: speed of communication. If you pronounce "/etc" as "et
by combatentropy 6y ago
It is for the same reason that anyone ever nudges anyone else about pronunciation, spelling, or grammar: speed of communication.
If you pronounce "/etc" as "et cetera", then it will add a step in me parsing your speech ("Oh, he means 'etsy'").
Second, now I have an awkward decision to make when speaking back to you. Do I adapt my pronunciation to yours for the length of this conversation? Or do I pronounce it my way, causing the extra step in your translation of my speech, then also causing you to wonder why I am saying it differently, furthermore causing you to consider whether to change your pronunciation to mine, if nothing else to end this extra thought process every time?
Also, if I adapt my pronunciation to yours, I guess now I need to remember to say it your way every time we talk forever, and say it Henry's way when speaking to him, and now I have this whole table in my head of various pronunciations for various individuals.
And then what happens if I am in conversation with you and Henry at the same time? Do I say things your way, his way, or my way? And what do you do? And what does Henry do?
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Or we could just stop, agree upon a common pronunciation, and move forward at the normal speed of conversation.
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To clarify, the tone never should be condescending. This is a small matter. Therefore the tone should be light.
The pronunciation that is deemed "correct" is usually the one of the majority. So it is just an attempt to get everyone on the same page. It strikes me more as "inclusive" than "anti-inclusive". If I were "anti-inclusive", then I would silently let you say it your way, smile inside, and then talk behind your back to Henry about what a newb you are.
- glitchcrab 6y agoI just want to point out that pronouncing etc as etsy isn't universal by any means - in fact I suspect it's a very American pronunciation. If you pronounced it 'etsy' in a sentence here in the UK, people wouldn't understand what you're talking about.
- KineticLensman 6y agoAgree. Most English people at least would be nonplussed if you said "etsy etsy" rather than "etcetra etcetra" to indicate something that goes on and on.
- philwelch 6y agoAmerican here and I say “et cetera” when I mean “et cetera”, but /etc is “etsy”.
- glitchcrab 6y agoThat makes a little more sense. /etc is e-t-c for me, but I may be in the minority there.
- dingaling 6y agoMost UK English speakers would be confused if you used 'nonplussed' to mean confused... Human languages are hugely inefficient!
- OJFord 6y agoDo you mean AmE speakers? Because 'confused' is (roughly) what it means to me, a BrE speaker, but your comment made me curious and indeed Wiktionary gives def 2 (proscribed, US, informal) as 'unfazed, unaffected, or unimpressed' instead.
- alias_neo 6y agoAgreed. Nobody I work with has ever called it Etsy. Etsy is a shop where you buy handcrafted things online.
- combatentropy 6y agoOnly the directory is pronounced etsy. The rest of the time we say et cetera. I don't even know how widespread etsy is for the directory. I hardly ever hear anyone pronounce anything, since most communication among programmers is written.
- colordrops 6y agoIs that pronounced "noob" or "new-bee"
- UncleMeat 6y ago> Or we could just stop, agree upon a common pronunciation, and move forward at the normal speed of conversation. We can. That's largely fine. But it is also worth recognizing that a root cause of this problem is the community's desire to use shortened names for everything. C/UNIX (and later Linux) has this convention and it leads to way more of these shibboleths than other ecosystems.
- yread 6y ago> awkward decision I would say unless it's someone extremely junior just use whatever they use. Communication is already difficult enough. "use customer's language", show some empathy