5 ms·
Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong
- normie3000 2y agoI worked with a guy who pronounced vi as "six".
- pan69 2y agoFair enough. :)
- drivingmenuts 2y agoI always said "vee-aye" for vi, but I just say "vim" like it looks like it should be said. If it actually stood for "VI Improved" it should be "viim" (pronounced veem?).
- johnisgood 2y agoThis is why I prefer writing over speaking when discussing programming-related stuff.
- howard941 2y ago"Euler" instead of "Oiler"
- foxglacier 2y agoand von Mises is von Meeseez which I can't manage to learn and still call it von my sis.
- howard941 2y agoI take care of that one with Mises Pieces /g
- Garlef 2y ago??? Not sure how an American would pronounce "oiler" but if it's "oil" as in "sunflower oil" then that's a pretty good emulation of the original German pronounciation of "Euler"... Another anology Euler-Room Boiler-Room Roughly the same. (Minus the B of course)
- howard941 2y agoOil as in sunflower oil, yes
- gibbitz 2y ago> GIF like "gif", of course I also loved they pointed out pronouncing `regex` as "rejects" was wrong.
- RankingMember 2y agoI don't care what the creators say, I will die on the hill of it being gif with a hard G! :P
- popularrecluse 2y agoGiraffe-ics interchange format
- zinckiwi 2y agoOr irritate _everyone_ and pronounce it with a soft J. Zhif.
- kokanee 2y agoI take issue with the options of "RAY-ghex" and "RAY-jeks." In my experience you can say either "REH-ghex" or "REH-jeks."
- billev2k 2y agoREJ-exs
- dtagames 2y agoReg like regular, from whence it comes. Regular Expression.
- Aloisius 2y agoVegan came from vegetarian. Signatory came from sign. When you alter spelling enough, people assume general pronunciation rules. Since regex ultimately comes from Latin and has a g followed by an e, pronouncing it with a soft g is rather natural.
- 2y ago
- humblepie 2y agoI don't know, but it will always be "vyte".
- cholantesh 2y agoBecause vite means fast in French, which is ironic because French is a well-documented waste of time.
- wonnage 2y agoRegex should be "reg-ex" rather than any of the listed pronunciations since it's just short for regular expression
- tome 2y agoI think it's ambiguous whether to pronounce then abbreviate or abbreviate then pronounce. Here are some example from the Haskell world: https://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/pronouncing-abbreviations/ https://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/pronouncing-abbreviations/
- camdez 2y agoOk, I like this game / question, but I daresay I'm confused about some of these (or have not even fathomed some of the implied pronunciations). `seq`, `Eq`, `prev` I pronounce like the beginnings of the underlying words, so I'd say pronounce-then-abbreviate and abbreviate-then-pronounce yield the same result. I guess this implies people are saying "SECK" (`seq`) and "ECK" (`Eq`), rhyming `prev` with "rev", and pronouncing `id` like Freud's id? (Eek.) In fairness, I'll confess I pronounce `enum` "E-NUM", not "E-NOOM".
- tome 2y ago> pronouncing `id` like Freud's id? Do you pronounce it as "eyed", or as two letters, I-D?
- LoganDark 2y agoRegex is indeed reg-ex. Anyone who says "red-jex" is dead to me
- WorldMaker 2y agoIn my experience most people that say regex a lot tend to pronounce it "rezh-eks". The softening drop from g to j to zh is a fascinating one in this context, and I think makes it easier to pronounce a lot. I'm not one to argue that it is the "right" pronunciation in general, but it is the "feels right" pronunciation to me.
- RheingoldRiver 2y agoLaTeX is....controversial. I say "LAH-tek" but I've heard a lot of different pronunciations. LaTeX was the original gif fight haha
- riedel 2y agoI would always pronounce it as in Scottish Loch, but I guess that is natural if you are German.
- rvogler 2y agoWell, first of all LaTeX is derived from TeX. And the X isn't an x but the Greek letter X whose pronunciation seems to depend on Greek epoch and also geographic preferences. The final say would have Donald Knuth. I think he said it's like the Ch in (Happy) Chanukka ...
- drivingmenuts 2y agoAnd again, a case where the creator could have done everyone a favor and not given it an obscure name that only an academic (and probably not many of those) would be able to pronounce correctly.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoThat’s one controversy that shouldn’t be. Quoth Knuth (The TeXbook, chapter 1, “The name of the game”): > 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.
- quercusa 2y ago> TeX rhymes with the word blecchhh That's the Mad Magazine Knuth speaking: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-enduring-art-of-computer-programming/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-enduring-art-of-computer-p...
- 2y ago
- Kilenaitor 2y agoI used to mispronounce Redis too and I fully fault the "MongoDB is web scale"[0] video for that. Glad I'm not alone heh [0]: https://youtu.be/b2F-DItXtZs https://youtu.be/b2F-DItXtZs
- foxglacier 2y agoTook me years to realize Linux wasn't lie-nix. Some of my friends had been calling it that and it seems we were a bubble of wrong. There's also the lee-noox camp but that's just weird. Also sea hash turned out to be sea sharp.
- siriaan 2y agoTook me several years to unlearn 'Lie-nix'!
- sctb 2y agoI remember encountering this file in Red Hat Linux circa 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg. It sounds much clearer nowadays, but still to my ear it's roughly halfway between lih-nucks and lee-noox.
- thedanbob 2y ago> Also sea hash turned out to be sea sharp. This irked me when I learned it as I'm into both tech and music, but it never once occurred to me to apply the music convention to a tech name.
- Titan2189 2y agoJEE-rah, not GY-rah
- mac3n 2y ago/me pronounces something unprintable
- twolf910616 2y agoazure is tough for me.
- rvogler 2y agowhere I'm from it's pronounced like "Ärger" ... which is quite apt. cause that what you get when you use it.
- riffraff 2y agoFor a very long time I thought "cache" was pronounced with a voiced e, "cach-ay", probably cause I thought of "cachet".
- acheron 2y agoI had a boss who did that many many years ago and it was like nails on a chalkboard. I'm glad you have corrected yourself. :)
- rvogler 2y agoI heard cash-ee and cage. Of course, it is cash like cache is king.
- acherion 2y agoI'm Aussie, so I'm automatically wrong, but here in Australia it's typically pronounced "caysh". It's a uniquely Australian thing, saying cache this way outside of this country will get you looks.
- normie3000 2y agoDon't worry, you're not alone - Kiwis do the same.
- readthenotes1 2y agoCache has no cachét, if done right (other than speed of access)
- delichon 2y agoIdempotent anyone? Eye-dempotent or id-empotent?
- brador 2y agoThe worst I heard was calling PHP “pup”. Yes that’s a u.
- cholmon 2y agoI was at a Drupal workshop years ago and the guy running it referred to .tpl.php template files as "tipple fipps". Not as absurd as "pup", but still made my skin crawl. I also recall in the early 2000's hearing people call .html files "hotmail files".
- megadata 2y ago> Linus (Torvalds) technically "LEE-nuhs" in those European languages while "LYE-nihs" in English, but he actually doesn't care what you say It's hard not to forgive people to pronounce your name wrong, when they've never met you or anyone that pronounces it correctly. They've only read it on the screen and they still say your name as best they can.
- beardyw 2y agoHey, I am English and I pronounce it lee-nus as do others I know. Though English is a European language so I'm not sure where that leaves us!
- pkaye 2y agoLinus did make an audio clip back in 1994 saying ‘Hello! This is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as “Linux”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg
- RandallBrown 2y agoInteresting he says "Lih nux" and not "Lee nux"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hagbarth 2y agoIt might also be a Nordic thing. In my experience we go out of our way to allow for English pronunciations of our names.
- nobody9999 2y ago>It might also be a Nordic thing. In my experience we go out of our way to allow for English pronunciations of our names. Do you also (and correctly, I might add) decry the errors of the Anglosphere as Mr. Wirth did[0][1]? Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. [0] https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes_5/toc_id/1-0-6/s/696 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes_5/... [1] No, this is nothing new. Then again, perhaps someone will see it for the first time and be one of today's "lucky 10,000"[2] [2] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- havan_agrawal 2y agoI had a lot of trouble with "tuple": is it "too-pul", "tyu-pul" (like pupil) or "tupple" (like supple). I've heard it pronounced all ways by now
- hnuser123456 2y agoI read it as tupple.
- CookiesOnMyDesk 2y agotwo-ple, tri-ple, quadru-ple
- zinckiwi 2y agoI go with tupple. There is precedent (see: tuppence).
- NegativeLatency 2y agonginx trips people up sometimes
- avg_dev 2y agolove it especially the sense of humor... like on gif
- acheron 2y agoI have never heard anyone say "regex" with an /eɪ/ sound like "RAY". It's /ɛ/ like in "meh", or indeed the first syllable in "regular". (though "regex" has a "soft g" /dʒ/, not a "hard g" /g/ like in "regular").
- carey 2y agoCould it be an accent thing? Trying to learn foreign language pronunciation as a New Zealand English speaker is frustrating; I should not be pronouncing 에 as the vowel in “bed” the way I say the latter, but that’s what every description of it says.
- DangitBobby 2y agoI pronounce it as a portmanteau of regular and expression, and will continue to do so despite any corrections ;)
- spogbiper 2y agohow do you say "SIEM" or its less popular but apparently equivalent form, "SEIM"?
- normie3000 2y agong'inx
- asmeurer 2y agoAre there people actually out there saying "S-Q-L-ite"?
- johnisgood 2y agoSQ-Lite
- rvogler 2y agoor Postgre-S-Q-L instead of Postgres-Q-L
- scarby2 2y agoYou mean people vocalize the QL part? I don't think I've ever said anything other than postgres
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- anamexis 2y agoThe creator, Richard Hipp, for one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSKLA81tBis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSKLA81tBis
- jmbwell 2y agoI said “Freznul” for Fresnel in front of a lighting designer. He said “ah! So you’ve been reading!” I remember that now when someone pronounces something as it’s spelled. They’ve likely been studying by actually reading something, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
- thedanbob 2y agoHuh... TIL I've been pronouncing it wrong. Either the Fresnel equations never came up while I was studying physics or my professor(s) also mispronounced it lol
- noahjk 2y agoOne of our friends has a great one - they (husband and wife) both say "Carry-catcher". For example: "Man, that portrait looks more like a carry-catcher!" (caricature)
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoNo Whois. I said that wrong for a long time. It's WhoIs. Two words.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoFor the longest time I would pronounce $FOO as "string foo" in my head and occasionally out loud, because that's how my dad said it when talking about BASIC code in the 70s & 80s. Then I heard a younger co-worker do it while we were talking about sh code and felt bad for unintentionally infecting him with a nonsense habit.
- colordrops 2y agoBack in the BBS days I used to pronounce "warez" like "juarez", growing up in a spanish speaking community, and not knowing it was short for "softwares".
- jaredhallen 2y agoMy friends and I also pronounced it that way. We are all english speakers, just not very bright ones, apparently.
- patrick41638265 2y ago"Ecks-eff-see-ee" (Xfce), not "x-face" (sadly, got this myth debunked just now lol)
- hagbarth 2y agoThe Primeagen has permanently ruined my pronunciation of SQL (squeal).
- everfrustrated 2y agoAlso chat-jipity
- zamadatix 2y agoI love it, pypi was a surprising one for me! A "Forvo for tech terms" would be nifty (many of these overlap with non-tech terms with different pronunciation).
- rvogler 2y agoKernel is actually pronounced Colonel btw.
- thehours 2y agoThe 'correct' way to pronounce NumPy is 'num-pie', but my brain delights in reading it as 'lumpy' with a leading 'n'.
- EvilTerran 2y agoSame! I also enjoy reading SciPy as "skippy".
- ACS_Solver 2y agoThe article mentions GNU, and it took me a long time until I found out that English speakers pronounce it "noo", "new" or similar. My native language routinely has four consonants in a row, sometimes more, and gn is a perfectly common consonant sequence so it never occurred to me that the GNU project could be pronounced as anything but gnu. Turns out English speakers intuitively drop the initial g, or often have to insert a pretty obvious vowel guh-noo style.
- Sharlin 2y agoIt's just how all "gn" (or "kn") words are pronounced in English – "gnaw" /no:/ "gnome" /noum/, "gneiss" /nais/, "knight" /nait/
- drivingmenuts 2y agoIt's because the animal is called a gnu and a lot of us heard of the animal way before we ever heard of GNU. Sometimes, part of me thinks GNU is pronounced like that because someone wanted to be an asshole.
- aaronbaugher 2y agoThat's why I (despite being an English speaker) have always pronounced it "g-new," not caring what was correct. Pronouncing it like the animal seems designed to cause unnecessary confusion. Reminds me of the MST3K skit where Mike told the bots he was a big fan of Noh Japanese theater.
- fanf2 2y agoI hate to helk, it’s a G-noo. https://youtu.be/j53z6RfFb7U https://youtu.be/j53z6RfFb7U
- NikkiA 2y agoIt's not entirely dropped, it's a glottal 'g' that manifests mostly as a slight pause instead of a sound, although you can often see the larynx movement.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
- nlitsme 2y agoIt seems Americans always screw up German names, like Gödel, Schrödinger. So are Dutch names like Dijkstra, Huygens. I don't think there are sounds like 'ö', 'ij', or 'ui' in English. note: 'uy' is the 16th century spelling of current 'ui'.
- yen223 2y agoI only recently learned we're all pronouncing Einstein wrong
- dingaling 2y agoThat depends on your frame of reference
- nozzlegear 2y agoAs far as Dijkstra and Huygens go, those are somewhat common last names where I live in Iowa, so their pronunciations have surely been Americanized a long time ago. I'd pronounce them as "deekstra"/"dikestra" and "hi-ginz," and that's how the people I know with those names pronounce them.
- nsxwolf 2y agoYesterday I found out JWT is pronounced "jot"
- shoo 2y agojawwwt!
- kelafoja 2y agoMissing squeel (sql) and chason (json).
- nozzlegear 2y ago> Poisson (distribution) > "pwah-SOHN", with a nasally ending, because French Je refuse.
- adzm 2y agoI pronounced iterator and iterate with an EYE sound instead of an it sound. Still find myself doing that in speech or in my head. Personally it started because of the i variable commonly used in for loops; as a kid you don't hear iteration spoken often.
- adzm 2y agoAlso PNG is pronounced ping but I've never heard anyone say anything other than spelling out the acronym
- elaus 2y agoI feel like hardly anyone in Germany knows how to pronounce Azure (myself included for the longest time). There are no other common words like it, and what feels like the most obvious pronunciation is far from the correct one.
- pan69 2y agoHere in Australia it's typical to say Ah-zure (Ah as in Aha) where as Americans typically say Ay-zure (Ay as in the name Jay). There are many differences in pronunciation between English from various countries. E.g. in Australia we say Mo-bile were "bile" rhymes with "vile" whereas Americans typically pronounce it as Mo-bol. There are lots of others.
- nobody9999 2y ago>Here in Australia it's typical to say Ah-zure (Ah as in Aha) where as Americans typically say Ay-zure (Ay as in the name Jay). There are dozens of dialects/pronunciation styles in the US. What you may have heard from some US folks isn't what you'll hear from others. As an American who lives in the US, I have never heard anyone say 'Ay-zure', WRT to either the color or the "someone else's server' offering from Microsoft. As for Mobile, there are multiple pronunciations in various places around the US. Anything from 'mo-b-aye-l' (as you Aussies say) to 'mob-ill' (as in mafia) to 'Moe-bill' (as in one of the Three Stooges) to 'Mo-beel'. Then again, I live on the east coast and those west coast weirdos sure do talk funny. Edit: Clarified "pronunciation" of Mobile (with long 'o' and 'i' and silent 'e').
- drivingmenuts 2y agoIt gets worse in the US. There's Mobil (the oil company - pronounced MO-bƏl), mobile (as it capable of movement - pronounced either MOE-bile or MO-bƏl) or Mobile (a city in the state of Alabama - pronounced (AFAIK) mo-BEEL). You can mispronounce all sorts of things in the US and no one will blink an eye, but you mispronounce a town name, prepare to be dogpiled. Especially if you're in Palestine, Texas (Pal-es-teen NOT Pal-es-tine).
- 2y ago
- arevno 2y agoI said "etcetera" for the unix /etc path for years before someone corrected me.
- jaredhallen 2y agoI still do.
- normie3000 2y agoWhat was the correction?
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y agoSQL should be pronounced like sqwrl, the small rodent with a fluffy tail. Javascript should obviously be pronounced Yavascript.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jasonm23 2y agoJavascript should be pronounced by it's true name, but it's not printable in this fine organ of conversation.
- berbec 2y agoI still haven't managed to break myself of the habit, from the 80s, of referring the operator of a BBS as if they were someone's female sibling: sis-op.
- arresin 2y ago> repo: "REE-poh", not "REH-poh" This is just aus vs us English.
- NikkiA 2y agoI've always pronounced 'pypi' as pie-pie and assumed it's a homonym pun.
- valiant55 2y agoSame, but maybe pie-pee-eye is better to distinguish is from pypy?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Remnant44 2y agoAnother one I learned recently: The godot engine is not go-dot, it's guh-dow.
- ofrzeta 2y agoArguably it's missing "Engine X" (NGinx), "Skasee" (SCSI) and "Pixie" (PXE).
- readthenotes1 2y agoI always heard SCSI as scuzzy, never with an A sound
- Aloisius 2y agoI personally used scuzzy. I've heard it pronounced sexy.
- Aldipower 2y agoAnd flagged. This thread is so interesting and shows how much european language diversification is involved in tech. Not sure why some people cannot stand multi culti.:-)
- thunderbong 2y agoWhy is this flagged?
- Imustaskforhelp 2y agoHuh why was this flagged??? Shouldn't hackernews take some accountability as to why they flagged it or what HUH??