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Pronunciation Guide for Unix

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Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#111

Post by notjulianjaynes »

egypturnash wrote: post #86

From the derivation section for !’s pronunciation as “bang”: Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!"…

There's also such thing as an interrobang: ‽

Presumably interrogate = ? bang = !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#112

Post by ss64 »

Zenst wrote: post #11

! Exclamation point exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, not (UNIX) (C), dammit (UNIX) Deeply sadened there is not entry for this with "splosh dot", as that and "bang" are the ones everybody I've worked with used over past 3 decades, though mindful that may well be a local cultural thang from the UK. As for ~ even sadder there…

I have added "swan hyphen" to the page now.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#114

Post by hacker_aide »

tominous wrote: post #66

My mind was blown when visiting Sweden in 2002 and finding out they pronounce "www" as "vee vee vee" (not just because the letter name double-v makes much more sense than double-u, but because they were smart enough to shorten it in this case). Since then I've pronounced it in English as "dub dub dub" and found people generally understand it. I hope it catches on.

Since www is pretty much unnecessary today, I'm hoping it just goes away.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#115

Post by hacker_aide »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #72
scarby2 wrote: post #36

it confuses me that he lists brackets as [] but not for (). () are brackets [] are square brackets and {} are curly brackets. certainly if you're from the UK and in maths class grew up being told about: BODMAS - Brackets, Orders Division, Multiplication, Addition Subtraction I believe PEMDAS is more common in the USA

From my kids' school maths I know this rather as BIDMAS - with the 'I' standing for indices (i.e. powers), which makes more sense, no? For my own part, I don't remember any fancy acronyms being rolled out to help us remember this stuff when I were a lad. Kids today grumble grumble etc.

When I was in school, we only used apostrophe, comma, open and close paren, exclamation point, question mark, dollar sign, and period. Maybe a percent sign in later years. Of course my exposure to computers in those days was watching TV when the announcer took a stack of (punch) cards from a card sorter and called it a computer (UNIVAC IIRC).

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#116

Post by 3836293648 »

alisonatwork wrote: post #24
pyuser583 wrote: post #12

I once had an insanely important job interview where I pronounced “fstab” as “F Stab” not “FS Tab.”

I care zero, it's still "F stab" to me. And URL is "earl". But despite favoring the short version for those two, I always spell out every letter of SQL, and pronounce etc as "et cetera". None of it is consistent or rational and it doesn't matter because pretty much all of the time people know exactly what you mean. Perhaps I was lucky that one of my first bosses who'd been using UNIX since the 80s pronounced vi like…

And IRC is irk

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#117

Post by jwiz »

tominous wrote: post #66

My mind was blown when visiting Sweden in 2002 and finding out they pronounce "www" as "vee vee vee" (not just because the letter name double-v makes much more sense than double-u, but because they were smart enough to shorten it in this case). Since then I've pronounced it in English as "dub dub dub" and found people generally understand it. I hope it catches on.

It's been a long time since I've said "www" out loud, but I always say "wuh wuh wuh" (like the first sound in the word "wood").

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#118

Post by Zenst »

ss64 wrote: post #112
Zenst wrote: post #11

! Exclamation point exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, not (UNIX) (C), dammit (UNIX) Deeply sadened there is not entry for this with "splosh dot", as that and "bang" are the ones everybody I've worked with used over past 3 decades, though mindful that may well be a local cultural thang from the UK. As for ~ even sadder there…

I have added "swan hyphen" to the page now.

Thank you, was and still is one of my favorite terms.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#120

Post by NylaTheWolf »

aeldidi wrote: post #18
NylaTheWolf wrote: post #15

I only recently learned that /usr was an acronym and not just a shortening of "user". Are we supposed to say each letter??? I've been pronouncing it as "user" this whole time!

Supposedly, usr was supposed to be “user”[0] but was switched after the Unix guys needed more disk space and split the file system into the / and /usr mount points. Then /home was made because /usr was filled up with other things. [0]: Rob Landley of busybox fame recalled on the busybox mailing lists some ten years ago http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...

Oh really? That's so fascinating. TIL!
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