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Pronunciation Guide for Unix

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Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#71
> - Hyphen: minus (sign), dash, dak, option, flag, negative (sign), worm, bithorpe

Instead of dak, I've heard this and tend to use it as tac instead, which apparently originates from flag separators in the Navy [0], so there is some logic behind it.

[0]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/191807/pronuncia...

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#72
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.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#73

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

You should not feel any shame at being the victim of *nix's anarchic names.

I can still recall, with Proustian clarity, my feelings upon learning 'cat' and, simultaneously, that it stood for 'concatenate': "but surely in 99% of cases you are 'catting' a single file, so that name makes no sense". Was I wrong? I was not.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#75

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!

It is a shortening for “user”. The “acronym” was made up later (and is BS.)

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#77
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

BEDMAS in Toronto Canada in the early 2000s.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#78

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…

I once worked with someone who pronounced SQL files as "squalls". That was the weirdest and most creative pronunciation I've heard.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#79

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.

I do the same. It has always annoyed me that we have a 3 syllable name for the letter W.

Re: Pronunciation Guide for Unix

#80
post #50
post #39

I am glad to see that I have been properly indoctrinated. A little bit disappointed that it doesn't clarify how to pronunciations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_transcription ), I was expecting that we could settle on gif once and for all.

Only godless savages and the sort of people who talk at the theatre pronounce it with a soft G.

And put toilet paper rolls on with the "feed" side towards the wall.
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