Live data from Hacker News

Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

wonger.dev

61–70 of 141 posts

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#61
post #39

I 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.

Huh... 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

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#62
post #51

"Euler" instead of "Oiler"

??? 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)

Oil as in sunflower oil, yes

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#65
post #17

The worst I heard was calling PHP “pup”. Yes that’s a u.

I 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".

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#66
The 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.

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#67
It 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'.

Re: Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

#69
post #67

It 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'.

I only recently learned we're all pronouncing Einstein wrong
Post reply on HN