I’ve always pronounced the word “Southern” to rhyme with howthurn. I know most people say it like “suthurn” instead. I didn’t realize that the way I pronounce it is considered weird until recently!
Most of them. I have that good ol autism speech pattern
That what???
Some people with autism annunciate words differently. It’s not being pronounced (for the most part) differently, it’s sorta like an accent. Of course this isn’t the case for all autistic folk, considering a big part of the condition is ‘masking’, so mimicking even speech patterns is almost engraved in our brains. But for some who don’t care for masking, or are less adept at it, they tend to have a variety of unique speech patterns.
For myself, I’m a victim of misplaced rising or sinking tones. I go up or done on words or parts of the sentence that just doesn’t make sense. I also pause where people don’t normally.
As for actual words, my annunciation is just terrible. I over annunciate some syllables, and slur or combine others.
Also I say can’t like c + ain’t. Cain’t.
.ǝdoɹnƎ uᴉ ƃuᴉʌᴉl uɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ uɐ ɯɐ ᴉ ʇnq .ǝɯᴉʇ ǝɥʇ ll∀
Australia is so hellbent on making words sound cute by shortening everything. It makes me giggle even when they are mad.
My wife has to be careful when picking child names because I will immediately Australianise it to something stupid.
The sprinkles on bread is adorable
Fairy bread is the best.
I don’t personally do this, but many people in my family say the days of the week with “dee”. Like “Sundee”, “Mondee”. I think it’s charming, but one of their children said they were weird for saying it that way.
Also, as a programmer, there are some words that programmers use that are abbreviated which I refuse to pronounce the way that others pronounce them because I think it’s weird, but virtually everybody pronounces them different to me.
For example, there is a common keyword in programming languages called “enum”, and most people I know pronounce it as “EE-num”, like it rhymes with “ME dumb”. But “enum” is short for “enumeration”, so I pronounce it as if it’s the first two syllables of “enumeration”, like “ee-NUUM”. Although I think the normal pronunciation is weird, I don’t say anything to people. I just pronounce it the way that I think it should be pronounced. But on multiple occasions, other programmers have called me out for it and asked why I pronounce it “wrong”.
There are several other programming terms like this, but they don’t immediately come to mind. Enum is the most common example.
Do you pronounce “char” like “care”?
I do, especially in VARCHAR as vare-care where everyone else is on the varr-carr train.
I typically pronounce “char” as “character”. Honestly, I rarely have any reason to talk specifically about chars, so it doesn’t come up often.
The next logical question is, then, why don’t I pronounce “enum” as “enumeration”? And the answer is that I often do. But I do say it both long and short.
Reminds me of my highschool computers teacher who pronounced “modem” as “mo-deem”. Because it’s short for modulator/demodulator.
Spoken language is about communication with the immediate group of people you’re interacting with, and is fluid, so while I agree with the idea you suggest of enum on an intellectual level (as well as several others), using the generally accepted way to pronounce things verbally reduces misinterpretation, so I pronounce things as they are generally pronounced. Spoken language is too ephemeral to be imprecise or use your own flair, IMHO. It’s a communication method that has shared rules, not a self-expression medium that is owned by you alone like what clothes you wear. There’s way more wrong with how the English language pronounces things than a few niche technical terms, but those weren’t decided by any one person. In fact that’s why it’s such a mess, but it’s functional.
Just my opinion from a sociological and practical standpoint. Probably contributing to that, I’m AuDHD and so misinterpretation is something I’ve struggled with my whole life. So precise communication is something I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting, especially at work. For reference, I’ve been a software product analyst, product manager, engineer, and currently architect as well as I used to run a nonprofit focused on ethics in the software industry, so I have had to do a lot of communicating ideas around software at many different levels for decades with both technical and nontechnical people.
“ee-NUUM” seems like it would roll of the tongue easier than the latter and that’s the way I would say it too because of what it’s short for, so I get it!
I don’t personally do this, but many people in my family say the days of the week with “dee”. Like “Sundee”, “Mondee”. I think it’s charming, but one of their children said they were weird for saying it that way.
My first English teacher in Germany taught us this way as well. She was horrible. Calling kids stupid and such.
One of my biggest pet peeves in programming, hell even language in general, is when people sound out abbreviations. Like they say url instead of U.R.L. Or sequel instead of S.Q.L. Or in Star Wars when they say at at instead of AT-AT. The funniest one is smück for CMYK.
I had a specific experience where I couldn’t understand a client request the first time around because they kept talking about some guy named Earl.
I can’t really express how jarring that pronunciation is - you just need to genuinely experience it sometime without warning to truly grok the oddness.
Or sequel instead of S.Q.L.
Squeal.
I knew somebody (not a programmer) who pronounced HTML as “hotmail”. I normally let people pronounce things however they want, but I had to beg her to pronounce it differently because I simply couldn’t deal with it pronounced like that.
How old were they? Because this (top left) may be the reason…
I signed up for a Hotmail account in 1997. I told my mom and she freaked out. She heard hot-male.
“I’m very skilled at C pound”
Still better than “C hashtag”.
I’m a purist. It’s “C octothorpe”
You win. All the upvotes.
I think “hotmail” (the email service) is actually called that after HTML.
Url and at-at are solidly initialisms. SQL has a solid enough argument for being an acronym that I’ll accept either.
I’ve never met anyone in tech who’s pronounced it any way other than “sequel”, and some of those folks were DB admins since the 80’s.
A lot of our interns and fresh-from-school say S.Q.L. but everyone else is calling it sequel. Usually after a few years even the youth start calling it sequel, in my experience.
It’s hard to say MS S.Q.L. Server, at least in comparison to MS Sequel Server
What I have a hard time with is when they just call it “sequel server”. Obviously, I understand what they mean, but it seems so nonspecific.
What about FAQ?
Most everyone I know says F.A.Q. But I like saying ‘fack’, as in it’s the page where you find the facts.
I like saying mumorperger for MMORPG because Yahtzee Croshaw said it that way in one of his review videos once.
Oh, yeah, that one is also on my whitelist.
And Laser.
Over time I switched to saying it like you. It’s more internally consistent for me to pronounce all abbreviations the same as the words being abbreviated. That applies to enum, char, var, serde, num, regex, etc.
One I can’t stand is pronouncing regex as “rej-ecks.” I’ve also heard Redis pronounced “red-iss” which also sounds gross to me.
But that’s “regular expressions”, which shortened is rej-ecks. How else would you say it? “Rejects”?
“reg-ecks” with a g sound as in “get”, after all that is how “regular” is pronounced
I think they mean the first syllable is pronounced “reg” like in “regular”, not “rej” like in “reject”. I’m in the rej camp personally. Saying reg is some gif jif shit that feels wrong
So you pronounce GIF as “jiff?” That sounds totally more wrong to me. It’s “graphics” not “jraphics.”
That’s what they want you to think so they can keep all the giraffe gifs to themselves.
Oh sorry I can see how you would take it that way in the context. No I pronounce it like everyone else did before the creator decided it was JIF, which feels wrong to me. I meant that sentiment is how I feel about saying “reg ecks”
Reggecks.
It’s the dumb thing about English where g can be like Gremline or like Giraffe. So hard g. The redis one I don’t get through text, though .
Edit: should’ve refreshed before posting since this was already answered (I opened this tab last night)
Fortunately, although “rej-ecks” is common, so is the correct pronunciation.
As for “red-iss”, I think that may be a losing battle. Wikipedia even lists that as the correct pronunciation. I think the rules start to fall apart when it is a project name, and when it smooshes together multiple words.
Continuing the programming vernacular, I was waiting to checkout at Best Buy in America like a month ago, and all the registers were empty forcing everyone to check out at customer service by the geek squad.
Someone came up behind me and asked if we were in the place to checkout. I replied, “Yes, this is the queue.”
Shortly after that, he had the same conversation with the person behind him and also used the word “queue” to which the third person asked if he was British, and the second guy just said he repeated what I said so I had to chime in and say I wasn’t British, just a programmer.
It bugs me a bit when people treat acceptable synonyms as foreign just because it’s not the word or within the range of words they would’ve chosen.
I had something similar happen getting off a plane at London Heathrow. I asked airport staff where I could find the restrooms and they replied with a slightly confused look, “do you mean toilet?”
I thought the Brits used Loo? Toilet feels so crass lol
That’s exactly what I thought! I figured that if airport/airline staff there were paid as poorly as in the US (with modern cost of living considerations), maybe it’s more common than I thought at the time.
I don’t get it. Are there other pronunciations for queue?
Their story is more about the choice of words. In America, we typically call it a “line”. In England, it is typically called a “queue”.
sudois spokensoo-dooin my house. Where I live alone.I pronounce it the same as you, and by the way, that’s also the pronunciation listed on Wikipedia.
But I can’t remember how other people that I’ve worked with pronounce it. I’m sure it’s come up, but I just don’t recall.
I think the fact that its configuration file is called sudoers is fairly decisive that other pronunciations are wrong.
I sound out Wed-nes-day instead of saying Wends-day.
I hear most people say “library” and I do too, but I’ve met educated people who say “liberry.”
Gotta say it with respect for our Lord Wōden. Wōden’s day
You know the famous mage from Forgotten Realms? I pronounce their name “EL-ah-min-ster”
Oh, I also have a terrible Boston accent so I nearly caused an HR incident when talking about “hooked horrors” aka “hookt ho-ahs” or as my coworker heard “hooked whores”. Horror is the best word to check for a Boston accent with.
What? Why? There’s not even an A in Elminster.
“jaws” is an equivalent of that for a metro NY accent. i could never hear my own accent until someone had me say it and really listen for it. now if you’ll excuse me i need to walk my dawg to the cawfee shop
Solder. I taught myself, never really talked to anyone about it, and for like a decade, I pronounced it like it’s spelled. With an L.
I just can’t break the habit
My aunt does the same with ‘salmon’.
If it makes you feel any better, that’s the correct pronunciation in England.
Thats the correct pronunciation outside of the USA.
Garage.
GraJ
Catch shit for it all the time, but at this point I think it’s more like a harmless Easter egg.
My grandma rolls the R in “Three”, and it’s become a game to get her to say it. She handles it with great humor.
I’m cool to have my own version of that.
You’d feel at home in Ontario.
- Toronto: Tronnah
- Grocery: grosheree
Team grosheree 4 lyf
Anyone who says gro-suh-ree can fuck right off back to whatever prep posh school for fancy people they came from
Anyone using 3 syllables may as well be the queen of England.
Grow-shree
Always just call it a car hole.
Living in Los Angeles as a white person, I refuse to pronounce street and city names that are Spanish the English-speaking way. Knowing Spanish since I was a kid from school and using it on a daily basis, my brain simply doesn’t butcher the pronunciation by default.
It’s caused confusion though for sure. I used to live near a street called La Tijera, but Americans pronounced it almost like Spanish “la tierra” which is a completely different word, and I couldn’t figure out where this street was that everyone was talking about.
So, do you call it “Loss Anjeless” or “Lōs On-hay-lays?”
Loss An-hell-ess.
Low’ En’hee-lews
Houston, Texas has a street called Kuykendahl (or something similar). People kept mentioning this ‘kirkendall’ street and I could never find it.
But that’s one where they’re leaning much closer to the Dutch pronunciation
Maybe there’s some vestige there but I asked upwards of 20 people and no one could explain it. Texas did historically have german-speaking communities and even cities, but I wasn’t aware of any Dutch nor had I heard anyone mention it. It’s interesting?
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That is a hilarious street name, omg
Does that translate to It’s Here Street??
Yeah, something like “it’s here” or “here it is.” With the proper accents the phrase is “aquí está.”
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US American. I’ve lived overseas a long time and pronounce the ‘h’ in ‘herbs’ because, as Eddie Izzard once said, “it’s got a fucking ‘h’ in it”. I don’t know when I switched but my mom laughed at me when we had a call recently.
One I only noticed a couple years ago: turmeric (was saying, and still frequently hear) ‘toomeric’.
Do you also pronounce the ‘h’ in hour and honor?
Those two examples have an “o” after the “h”. Are there any other words starting “he” that Americans treat the “h” as silent?
I lived in Philly for years and never noticed the way people say “erbs” but since returning to Australia I hear it constantly.
Edit: I hear Americans say it constantly. No one in Australia says “erb”.
Heir
Also anything starting with hema-, like hematology or hematoma… though that might be because of the æ.
Yeah you’ve been away a while, we say 'oagies now.
Hno. I do say ‘historical’ rather than ‘istorical’, but that’s the only one I can think of in the global English-speaking world that has any number of adherants off the top of my head.
I pronounce the Texas Houston the same as the. NYC street
I don’t know enough about New York or football to understand this.
Texas: like the name Hugh (hyuu)
NYC: like House (how)
The -ston bit doesn’t change.
Cape CANNA VERR ALL = Cape Canaveral
Why? Because I can.
Ever since that IT Crowd episode I can’t not pronounce pedestal as “pedal stool”.
Not me, but I know a bondage instructor who pronounces “bondage” like you would in French.
I think if you’re teaching something you should know the pronunciations. Didn’t take long to find other stuff wrong with him. My wife and I quickly left and sought our education elsewhere.
This makes me think of the State Farm commercial showing football players in a ballet class. “Boon-dlay…sah-vey…”
The mountain range on the eastern side of the U.S. is the ‘apple-at’chans’. At least nearly everyone from the southern end of them say it that way (source: I’m from there).
‘Apple-ay-shuns’ is just as strange as saying ‘Nor-folk’. Immediate indicator of you’re an outsider.
How do you pronounce Norfolk?
Ok, at least the Virginia version is ‘Nor-fuck’. And some long time residents say ‘Naw-fuck’.
Huh.
I’m from the PNW and I’ve always pronounced it Apple-Ah-Shuns.
For Norfolk… I’d basically pronounce that as Nor-Fuck.
Yeah, I’m saying a whole lot of people say it with a “shun” at the end. I blame the media and people originally trying to differentiate themselves from a perception of being an ignorant hillbilly. The hillbilly prejudice is much better now, but I was still personally encountering it even in the aughts. And the pronunciation has stuck because "that’s the way you’ve always heard it said. "
Everyone who lives in those hills (with the exception of a few pockets of yankees) says it “at-chan”.
I like to pronounce Numeric like Tumeric
UK English spells and pronounces that spice as “turmeric” (so the first syllable is pronounced like “turn” without the N), so I’m now imagining you saying nurmeric
