3 ms·

I've never ever heard CLI pronounced as a word but always as an acronym spelled, "see ell eye". Pronouncing as a word seems odd, like pronouncing PII as pie or

by IncRnd 4y ago

I've never ever heard CLI pronounced as a word but always as an acronym spelled, "see ell eye". Pronouncing as a word seems odd, like pronouncing PII as pie or IPX as epic.

jwiz 4y ago
I hear it a lot in sentences like "Is there a 'kly' command for it or do you have to use the 'gooey'?" If you are saying it a lot, you pretty quickly adjust to saying a 1-syllable word, instead of saying 3 syllables, whatever your moral stance is. :) Plus, why should "GUI" get a pronunciation but "CLI" be neglected?
- IncRnd 4y ago
  > Plus, why should "GUI" get a pronunciation but "CLI" be neglected? It's probably because the person who made the acronym or initialism had wanted it to be pronounced a certain way and chose a sequence of letters to achieve the desired result. Of course, the speakers of the letter-group will later decide when and how they will pronounce it! Acronym: a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words and pronounced as a separate word [1] Initialism: a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately [2] [1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/acronym https://www.dictionary.com/browse/acronym [2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/initialism https://www.dictionary.com/browse/initialism
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  In the mid-90s, there was some controversy/discussion over how to verbalize "WWW". Very unwieldy in its spelled-out 9-syllable form! So one of my coworkers proposed "dub-three" - two syllables - so sorry it never caught on.
dakiol 4y ago
In my experience, non-native english speakers pronounce it as "klee". But IBM is just I-B-M (because you cannot actually pronounce it like a word). In general, if the acronym can be pronounced like a word, non-native english speakers will do so. More examples of acronyms that are pronounced like words: AMI, GUI, BIOS, ios, RAID, ROM, RAM, DIMM.

by IncRnd 4y ago

I've never ever heard CLI pronounced as a word but always as an acronym spelled, "see ell eye". Pronouncing as a word seems odd, like pronouncing PII as pie or IPX as epic.

jwiz 4y ago

I hear it a lot in sentences like "Is there a 'kly' command for it or do you have to use the 'gooey'?" If you are saying it a lot, you pretty quickly adjust to saying a 1-syllable word, instead of saying 3 syllables, whatever your moral stance is. :) Plus, why should "GUI" get a pronunciation but "CLI" be neglected?

IncRnd 4y ago
> Plus, why should "GUI" get a pronunciation but "CLI" be neglected? It's probably because the person who made the acronym or initialism had wanted it to be pronounced a certain way and chose a sequence of letters to achieve the desired result. Of course, the speakers of the letter-group will later decide when and how they will pronounce it! Acronym: a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words and pronounced as a separate word [1] Initialism: a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately [2] [1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/acronym https://www.dictionary.com/browse/acronym [2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/initialism https://www.dictionary.com/browse/initialism
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
In the mid-90s, there was some controversy/discussion over how to verbalize "WWW". Very unwieldy in its spelled-out 9-syllable form! So one of my coworkers proposed "dub-three" - two syllables - so sorry it never caught on.

dakiol 4y ago

In my experience, non-native english speakers pronounce it as "klee". But IBM is just I-B-M (because you cannot actually pronounce it like a word). In general, if the acronym can be pronounced like a word, non-native english speakers will do so. More examples of acronyms that are pronounced like words: AMI, GUI, BIOS, ios, RAID, ROM, RAM, DIMM.