After a suggestion from @1amzave, I thought it would be fun to ask how various Crustaceans pronounce those UNIX utilities and programming terms we’ve all read a million times but perhaps not said.
With that, how do you pronounce:
- /etc
- /lib
- char
- fsck
- schema (and how do you pluralize it?)
I say
Ours match.
“but not cdr”
Nice touch. ;)
This is exactly what I do, and I assume is going to be the most common among people. Leaving a comment since I’m not sure whether you are counting votes or just comments.
I once received a pull request that was supposed to replace “schemata” with “schema” (sic, singular).
I pronounce ‘em list most people I’d presume.
Referencing this Am. Eng. IPA chart,
ɛt silɪbtʃɑrfʌskskiməandskiməsI speak mostly with Western Pennslyvania English accent a.k.a. Pittsburghese, if it matters. My accent isn’t as strong as others since I grew up north of the area.
Missing from the list, everyone seems to pronounce daemon as “daymon” but I’ve always thought it should be pronounced as “deemon” otherwise you have to start saying “ayon” for aeon and “encyclopaydia” as well. You know, for consistency.
Wait, is aeon not “ayon”? I assumed it was, and eon in “eeyon”.
Depends on how you pronounce the y.
There may be a case for differentiation for certain uses but I’m a simple peasant so I consider æon and and eon to be the same word since they both mean unspecified long stretches of time (longer than an era).
The Greek roots disagree with you for daimon [1] and aion [2]. Of course we don’t necessarily pronounce things as their roots, so this isn’t intended as a normative response.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(classical_mythology)
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aion_(deity)
Sure, but–and bearing in mind that I’m in no way a linguistics scholar, so huge grain of salt here–regardless of its roots the ancient Æ ligature has no direct English equivalent vowel sound so it was simplified to long e almost everywhere for the purposes of modern English. E.g. “ether” for “æther” and “medieval” for “mediæval”.
For whatever it’s worth, the cambridge dictionary agrees with me :) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/daemon
I pronounce them the same, with the exception of fsck, which I pronounce as effsick.
Never been more triggered by a bunch of tech-related text.
but what about:
cache? k-ssh?
Cash! I watched a video recently where the narrator pronounced it caysh and I just cannot
(Also folks come out for pizza tomorrow if you’re in NYC! Scarrs pizza at 1800! Cheap and crowded!)
I’m more interested in the ways people pronounce “–” as in “–verbose”.
“dash” “dash”, or “dash” for those odd single
-flags.Oh, so I’m not the only one. Many people around me call it “minus”.
Canadian living in the US:
The most consistent difference I notice is that almost every Canadian or British person I know pronounces “char” as in “charred” but my American colleagues, almost without exception, pronounce it as “care”.
American here; I say “char” as in flame. But if I were going to make it short for “character” I’d pronounce it more like “carr”, i.e. “carry” without the final syllable.
I seem to recall switching from “datta” to “dayta” due to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I still say “stattus”, not “staytus”.
I’m Australian, and we pronounce everything wrong, so my apologies; but:
As a confusing bonus, we pronounce route as “root” (to a place, or on a network). However, both the woodworking and networking routers are called “rout er”, in the American fashion. This might be because the verb “to root” means something quite different here, and most people don’t do that in public.
ets
lib
k-har (like if you say the first syllable of character, with a British accent)
fsck (just like that)
… how else would you pronounce schema? schemas.
Others:
sudo: “pseudo” (not “soo-doo”)/var: as in “variable”chmod,chown: see-aitch-{mod,own}ioctl: eye-oh-control (have also heard “eye-OCK-tull”, not a fan)Most come from how I’d read those combinations of letters in my native language (italian), except for schema.
Similar but not identical to lorddimwit.
also /usr as “oosir”
i taught myself to code and had different pronunciations in my head which changed as i was exposed to other people who also wrote code and used linux.
It is said that people who pronounce things “wrong” should be respected because they learned it from a book (or now the Internet) rather than being taught in person :)
Bonus round:
chmod: chuh-mod~: twiddle!: bangsrc: sir-seegif: jiff (respecting the creator’s wishes)jpg: jay-feg (respecting the wishes of those who think gif is pronounced like the “g” in graphics by pronouncing the “p” like “photographers”)Correct. Also acceptable for GIF is “heef”
What have you wrought upon this cursed land.
I worked for Cheezburger, which owned Señor Gif. There’s only one way to read that!
et-see (or ‘slash et-see’)
lib-as-in-libertine (or ‘slash lib’)
‘char’ (as in charcoal; and I literally just now realized how awkward that is…)
‘f-sock’
skee-ma. Like ‘sheep’, it is its own singular and plural. A case could be made for ‘schemata’ too, I suppose)
/etc = slash e-t-c
/lib =slash lib (like liberty)
char = ch-are (like charbroiled)
fack = f-ess-see-k
schemas = ski-ma ski-mas
I pronounce the first one as something like ‘ats’, but I note I seem to be the only one
In the Netherlands, we learn British English in high school, but of course we mostly hear American English, so don’t expect any consistency.
As I’m spanish/catalan I usually say these things in a mix of catalan and english:
I too mix spanish and english, altough with /etc as etcetera.
I think the worst from me might be ce ache oun
hahahaha, yes “ce ache oun” is a classic, I usually say “choun” tho, “ele ese” too.
Posting because I didn’t see another “fisk”. I learned to say that at CMU in the mid-80s so it must be correct. :) Also, it’s the best way to be able to say the word “fscking”, as in “what’s wrong with this fscking computer?”
• either e t c or etcetera
• lib, short for libertarian or liberal. This makes modern political rhetoric super confusing
• ch - are. I know that’s not how character sounds.
• fa schick. I never have to use this command. Get a GUI
Fun, but I refuse to answer because if you’ve spent most of your working life in a non-English speaking office you will probably have at least half of it wrong or don’t really pronounce it in English, ever :P
So my sample would be mostly made up, because you probably didn’t ask for the German stuff.
Can’t resist a simple example though. While I did use
/libin the past many people would use the German version of ‘lib directory’. lib64 would be a better example though, as there can be some ./lib - just saying not everyone uses ‘slash’.There’s no “wrong” way. :) I worked in a polyglot office in Luxembourg and the pronunciation differences were interesting.
English was the lingua franca of that office, which is ironic in itself: lingua franca being a Latin phrase that means “Frankish” but that indicated “English”…We also spoke French (my French 20 years ago was passable; it’s non-existent now). My best friend over there was a native German speaker and I’d regularly go hang out with him in Trier, so I picked up a little German (a very little German, mostly enough to order food/beer, ask if they spoke English, that sort of thing).
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