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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)

#221

- ifconfig: eye eff config (not “iff-config”) - “#!”: hash bang (not “shub-ang”) - sh: shuh like le as in le monde (not “ess ayche”) - tcl: tickle One of the hardest for me though is on a different topic to pronunciation. What name would you give to a variable that keeps track of the current working directory? What name did bash use for this variable? Answers (for me): - pwd: is “print working directory” - $PWD: is “…

I think of pwd as “present working directory”, but I have no idea where I got this from. And, it’s always a shebang line :)

‘pwd’ comes from Multics, where it abbreviates ‘print_wdir’.

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

#222
post #77
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

What’s better is that “My” has nothing to do with possession, and it’s pronounced “Me”: it’s Widenius’ daughters name[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius

And "MariaDB" was named after another of his daughters.

If memory serves, he also has a son (whose name I can't remember) after which he named some other piece of software (which I also can't remember).

All of this is almost certainly mentioned in that link you shared although, at the moment, I just can't be bothered to click it.

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

#223
post #135

Speaking of silly pronunciations, you silly native English speakers :-p Character/karacter but char/char? What is wrong with your language? :-(

> What is wrong with your language? It's an insane amalgamation of other languages with occasional attempts at consistency that actually make it worse. Imagine a library written in C+asm, then with parts grafted on written in idiomatic Pascal, then the whole mess ported to Java without changing any naming or structure. Every other method has a different namingConvention, if_notHybrid, to say nothing of other style as…

Well, that's an explanation, but it's not really excuse.

Other languages have had reforms and there is no natural language that I know of that doesn't have major influences from at least 3 or 4 different languages.

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

#224
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Wait until you hear they don't pronounce the "e", either :-p

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

#226
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.

> they're getting all their information through textual means

When I was very young, I had a friend who pronounced "modem" as "mod-DEEM" because he knew that the word is a portmanteau of "MOdulator-DEModulator".

His first exposure to "modem" was in print (computer magazines or BBSes), and it was some years before he heard the word spoken.

Many years later (but still many years ago!), I was pulled into a disagreement among a fledgling group of web designers: Is "GIF" pronounced with a hard G or a soft G ("jif")?

I realized that I'd never spoken the word aloud, and chose the hard G, because the word is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format.

Needless to say, I did not resolve that argument with my appeal to originalism. In the intervening years, I've spoken the word countless times, and settled on the soft G because it flows better in speech. As far as I know, the correctness debate is still ongoing today.

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

#227
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I pronounce it as "car". Don't know where that came from.

I think this pronunciation sounds right because it comes from "character", which doesn't have the "ch" sound.

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

#228
post #151

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.

Except if it's a parts bin maybe. ;)

It's an odd coincidence that shortening "binaries" to "bin" makes sense in this way, but you're right, /bin is a literally a bin to put your binaries.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Likewise, LaTeX isn't pronounced as the rubber derivative, but as "Lah-tecchh" /ˈlɑːtɛx/ (IPA via Wikipedia)

Have you ever heard of people pronouncing it like that?
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