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I think this applies to LaTeX as well. The fact that people pronounce it "lateks" is entirely the creator's fault.
by Asraelite 5y ago
I think this applies to LaTeX as well. The fact that people pronounce it "lateks" is entirely the creator's fault.
- notRobot 5y agoEven Google gets it wrong: https://imgur.com/a/nswxueq https://imgur.com/a/nswxueq
- owl57 5y agoIt gets TeX just as wrong. Interestingly enough, GNU and SCSI get reasonable "featured snippets" instead.
- wongarsu 5y agoAlso PNG, which in an attempt to prevent another gif/jif debacle wrote in the specification that its pronounced "ping"
- colejohnson66 5y agoI’ve always pronounced it like that. Do some people pronounce it differently?
- EE84M3i 5y agoI've mostly only heard Pee-En-Gee
- colejohnson66 5y agoFair enough. The comparison to GIF was leading me to the idea of a different pronunciation rather than just simply reading the letters.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoOther than friendly banter over a beer I've never given af how someone pronounced as long as they used one of the commonly "accepted" versions. Also never heard -anyone- call png "ping"
- anoncake 5y agopee-enn-gee?
- ajdude 5y agoI've always pronounced "png" as "pee-en-gee", while pronouncing "gif" as in "gift"
- DangitBobby 5y agoI have some friends who strongly assert only the "jif" pronunciation is correct and the "gif" pronunciation is incorrect due to the stated intention of the creator of the format. I can't wait to experience their transition from PNG to "ping" when they learn they've been "mispronouncing" it all along. I wonder if I can convince them to use aluminium?
- MereInterest 5y agoWait, but an argument from original intent on aluminum/aluminium would go towards using aluminum [0]. That was the original published name, and the change to "-ium" only happened shortly after. We could go even further on that route and argue that the entire pattern of ending metals in "-ium" rather than "-um" is a neologism based on a misunderstanding. Of the classical metals [1] such as gold (aurum), silver (argentum), lead (plumbum), none of them end in "-ium". So where does that come from? The best explanation I've heard is that it comes from the timeline of when different metals were discovered [2], back in the 1700s. Magnesium was discovered, and was named after Magnesia, a region in Greece. Basically, "magnesi-" + "-um". Then Barium was discovered, and was named from the Greek "baryta", meaning "heavy". Molybdenum followed the "-um" trend, and "tungsten"/"wolfram" ignored the discussion altogether. And now we get to the first mistake. Tellurium was named from the Greek "tellus", and should have been called "tellurum". Instead, by analogy from magnesium and barium, the suffix "-ium" was added instead. Strontium came next, after the town of Strontian. This reinforced the trend of the "-ium" suffix, even though it came from "stronti-" + "-um". By the time Zirconium was discovered from the mineral "zircon", the association was cemented. So many metals had ended with "-ium" by sheer coincidence, that people assumed that that was the correct Latin suffix. Bringing it back to the "aluminum" vs "aluminium", this means that there's neither authorial intent nor historical consistency in the use of "aluminium". I'm fine if people think it sounds better, and argue from that, but for the love of all that is holy, people need to quit pretended that it has any more validity or correctness to it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Coinage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Coinage [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_d...
- garmaine 5y agoI pronounce it “ping”, but that’s because I’ve read the spec. I e never met anyone else that pronounces or that way.
- FroshKiller 5y agoThen you haven't met me (or if you have, PNG hasn't come up), because I also read the spec.
- owl57 5y agoWTF. There's probably a lot of things in the world for which most users have talked to someone who has read the manual. But did the authors expect PNG to belong in this league?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bonoboTP 5y agoI almost tend to think these are intentional to tell the in-crowd apart, like a shibboleth. Including pronouncing SQL as sequel and so on.
- sokoloff 5y agoI wonder what the split is between “O-S-Ten” and “O-S-X”. I suspect -X is more common.
- 7thaccount 5y agoSQL is commonly pronounced as "sequel" or "S-Q-L". Is one really more correct at this point?
- Asraelite 5y agoObviously the only correct pronunciation is "squirrel"
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoAnd the only correct spelling of "squirrel" is sqwrl.
- biztos 5y agoI do hope the LaTeX folks remember to always spell Yahoo! with an “!” !
- toast0 5y agoEven Yahoo forgot about the ! :(
- JasonFruit 5y agoI have jokingly pronounced it Yay-hoo for so long that I am now unable to stop.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoThe correct pronunciation hardly matters for the marketability of the product. — it is usually understandable. In Linux' case, Linus Torvalds has said that he doesn't really care and admits that he instinctively pronounces it differently depending on the language that he's speaking.
- owl57 5y agoTIL that I do the same and each of the five letters sounds subtly differently in English and Russian.
- heelix 5y agoOh noes. I'm one of those people who keep calling it that. What is the correct pronunciation?
- bebop 5y agoLa(like law)-tech
- chrisseaton 5y ago> La(like law)-tech That's definitely not how you pronounce LaTeX. Wikipedia recommends LAH-tekh or LAY-tekh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJYBqvTllgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJYBqvTllgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQeXvwx6gE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQeXvwx6gE
- zerocrates 5y agoI'd say "la (like law)-tech" is pretty much the same as "LAH-tekh", minus the indicated emphasis.
- chrisseaton 5y agoGuess it depends how you pronounce 'law' then ha! I can't start 'law' with 'lah' no matter how hard I try - 'lah-ore' maybe?
- floren 5y agoAh, glancing at your profile I think you're hitting the traditional English problem of pronouncing letters which aren't there :) "To be forced to sawr into such rawr meat should be against the lawr" It's nicely counterpointed by the other habit of not pronouncing letters which are there, like in Worchestershire.
- electroly 5y agoYour accent exhibits the "cot-caught" merger, then. Those are two different sounds in most accents.
- vngzs 5y agoYeah, but pronouncing TeX "tek" is a bit of a shibboleth among mathematicians. The use of Greek letters is common enough in math papers to make it a natural inference (it's not an English "X", it's a capital Greek χ [0])—at least within the field. And if you don't know it, when one of your professors explains it to you you'll feel like they let you in on a little secret. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter)
- tored 5y agoWhen I was at university there was a discount food store in that city called Matex (mat is Swedish for food). Me and my study friends we pronounced the store as MaTeX similar as LaTeX instead of the normal eks sound at then end, techies giggled and everyone else looked confused.
- bouvin 5y agoHeh, we did much same at my (Danish) university with the store FøTeX.