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Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

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Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#141

I 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.

Do you also pronounce char as in character or as in charcoal?

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#142
post #2

This 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 pronounce…

> 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.

TIL: 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.

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#146
post #2

This 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 pronounce…

> 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…

I 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.

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#147

On 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!

Reflog, for when the person hasn’t been beaten enough already.

[deleted]

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#148
post #25

I 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/CHANGEL...

I 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.

> 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?

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I 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.

Agreed. Nobody I work with has ever called it Etsy. Etsy is a shop where you buy handcrafted things online.

Re: Common pronunciations of Linux directories, commands, etc. (2017)

#150
post #8

MySQL 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

I read once that somebody pronounced SQL as 'squeal' which leads to mysql being pronounced as 'my-squeal'. Rightly or wrongly, I prefer that pronunciation too. It's less cumbersome.

My non-computer-programmer mom once pronounced SQL as "squirrel" which I think is even better.
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