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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)

#191
post #9
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…

I was a su-dough person until I realise that sudo stands for 'super user do' or 'su do', so I switched to soodoo - it makes a lot more sense that way. f-suck is a new one for me though. I would say F S C K to someone else, but I call it fusk in my head.

In my head I pronounce fsck "fuck" because that's normally what I say when I realize I have to use it. Around people? fs check or filesystem check.

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

#192
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

> The official way to pronounce “MySQL” is “My Ess Que Ell” (not “my sequel”), but we do not mind if you pronounce it as “my sequel” or in some other localized way. https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/what-is-mysql.html There's an equivalent page in the SqlServer docs somewhere that recommends SequelServer as the idiomatic pronunciation. I pronounce each of them idiomatically. When saying SQL I tend to say S-Q-L…

I've been in the "sequel" camp, but that changes now. I'm not passing up the opportunity to talk to co-workers about "my squirrel".

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

#193

> chmod: as one syllable.. rhymes with 'nod' This is easy to do for many? In my experience, Anglo-Saxons can seldom pronounce “ GNU ” in one syllable, but they can this?

> In my experience, Anglo-Saxons can seldom pronounce “GNU” in one syllable It’s just pronounced ‘new’ isn’t it? How many syllabus can you fit in that?

It's supposed to be pronounced with a hard G [1].

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.html

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

#194
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…

I pronounce fsck as f-sick.

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

#195
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: su is “substitute user” (sometimes switch user), it merely defaults to root. man su: su - run a command with substitute user and group ID As for fsck I moved from F S C K to progressively bind the S and C in a slide of the tongue, which ends up sounding like F-ceek once I’ve eased in the audience with F-(s)ceek(ay) (parentheses get progressively toned down as I speak faster) That or just “FS check”.

You're correct, of course. I don't know why I remember it as super user.

Because that's its most common use - to impersonate as a privileged user - so su quite naturally becomes super user

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

#196

I found there is this "pride in the correct pronunciation" in the opensource community. It seems to be a signal of a group membership and a creed validator. Who cares though? Why does "correct pronunciation" matter? Linux is nowadays used by many more non-native English speakers who will pronounce it very differently. This attempt at correcting others seems like gatekeeping and, to me personally, feels like a very an…

Because it implies you are invested in the particular technology enough to care about minutiae.

Personally I just like using it as banal objection to win arguments.

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

#197
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For Romanians, we pronounce signal correctly, though. We have "gn" as a sound in Romanian, for example "a răstigni" (to nail to a cross"), we don't change it to "ni". But we do have the same problem as Italians with "pseudo": the "p" is right there, why are you skipping it?!? :-p

> the "p" is right there, why are you skipping it

Wait, they're skipping it?! Now that you mentioned it I think you're quite right, I don't remember hearing that many "p"s in front of "seudo".

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

#198
post #86

I found there is this "pride in the correct pronunciation" in the opensource community. It seems to be a signal of a group membership and a creed validator. Who cares though? Why does "correct pronunciation" matter? Linux is nowadays used by many more non-native English speakers who will pronounce it very differently. This attempt at correcting others seems like gatekeeping and, to me personally, feels like a very an…

I actually can't believe anyone says "etsy." If they ever do, I'm gonna be confused momentarily. And I'm not gonna follow suit, I'm gonna say E T C. If I ever get a friend. PS I also say "libe." As if shortening the word library.

Honestly, this is about the most consistent of the batch in my experience. Many of them vary, but I've never heard anyone beyond the cd/ls level of tutorial Linux say "e t c".

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

#199
post #82

I found there is this "pride in the correct pronunciation" in the opensource community. It seems to be a signal of a group membership and a creed validator. Who cares though? Why does "correct pronunciation" matter? Linux is nowadays used by many more non-native English speakers who will pronounce it very differently. This attempt at correcting others seems like gatekeeping and, to me personally, feels like a very an…

It takes some getting used to this idea, but I try to remember that when someone mispronounces an uncommon word or jargon term, it means that they're getting all their information through textual means - which probably means they don't have people close to them with the same interests or intellectual curiosity. That usually means, especially if it's a younger person, that they are smart and probably lonely.

With you until the last sentence. But yes, it does imply that they're resourceful enough to learn what they know with limited personal mentorship. It's worth gently guiding them towards the canonical pronunciation, but definitely don't be surprised if they show you up on how to use that thing they're mispronouncing.

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

#200

I found there is this "pride in the correct pronunciation" in the opensource community. It seems to be a signal of a group membership and a creed validator. Who cares though? Why does "correct pronunciation" matter? Linux is nowadays used by many more non-native English speakers who will pronounce it very differently. This attempt at correcting others seems like gatekeeping and, to me personally, feels like a very an…

Agreed. Most of the pronunciation - and the original meaning behind these non-words - is incredibly opaque and unintuitive
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