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!
I’m Dutch. I pronounce the -en at de ends of words, including the n. If you don’t know, that’s like 10% of all Dutch words
I pronounce milk like melk. Is it wrong definition but I’m not gonna change it at this point
How about Chipotle as cheepotole
It’s Helico-Pter not Heli-Copter. It’s a greek word from hélikos (screw, spiral, winding) and pterón (wing).
And since I’m fun at parties, I consequently pronounce it with a slight pause before and stress on the P and not a miniscule pause after the I and a slight stress on the O.
I tend to say Wensleydale, Tuesleydale and Thursleydale as the days of the week. It started as a thing I said to myself because I found it funny, but occasionally I’ll slip and say one of them out loud when I’m tired.
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.
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 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.
I think “hotmail” (the email service) is actually called that after HTML.
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 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.
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.
Url and at-at are solidly initialisms. SQL has a solid enough argument for being an acronym that I’ll accept either.
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’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.
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.
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.
Or sequel instead of S.Q.L.
Squeal.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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”?
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)
“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”
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
“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
What? Why? There’s not even an A in Elminster.
I choose to pronounce testicles like Heracles.
That is how it’s pronounced though. Unless I’ve somehow been mispronouncing Heracles…
Heracles is pronounced like /ˈhɛrəkliːz/ HERR-ə-kleez
Ah, I’ve only ever seen it written. Usually it’s the Roman Hercules that I hear spoken. Thanks
No problem! Not a very common word to come across in daily life :)
I’m German. One day my house was renovated and they were working with jackhammers to remove parts of the facade. It was incredibly loud and I couldn’t bare it. I lived close to university and had recently stopped working in one of the institutes. I knew though that my former colleagues had couches in some of their offices so I thought I’d give them a visit. I walked over to the institute and greeted my Australian former coworker. I explained about the noise in my house and said I was “looking for asylum”. Knowing the word “asylum” only from written language, I had no idea it was not actually pronounced “ay suh lum”. He asked “you’re looking for what?” as he obviously hadn’t understood. I repeated “ay suh lum” confidently and he politely said “ah”. Not long after, I learned the correct pronunciation of asylum and that memory has haunted me ever since. It’s been almost 10 years but I still cringe about it.
I understand the feeling, but that fear of being wrong is a plague, it prevents learning altogether. Especially languages ! we should be brave enough to proudly make mistakes and learn from them. Proudly. With pride
English is a bastard language without phonetics so you’ve just got to memorise every word, every phrase, and of course every idiom since half the language is just archaic expressions cobbled together without rhyme or reason (e.g. “rhyme or reason”)
That being said, German has a lot of traps too. The pronunciation of “ee” in himbeere and beerdigung, and guessing the spelling of words using “e” vs “ä” is a nightmare
I say appree-see-ate for appreciate, and artif-isss-ee-al for artificial.
Yes.
I pronounce “roster” like “rooster”, because it amuses me.
I approve heartily.
I’m fluent in both Spanish and English (obv). When speaking English, I’m conflicted on whether I should pronounce Spanish loan words in a shitty English accent like everyone else, or in a proper Spanish accent. So instead I pronounce them as horribly as I can.
Jalapeño is “yeah-la-peen-oh”. Fajita is “fah-gy-tay”. Quesadilla gets “quay-sah-dilah”
(As a joke of course)
I like it!
Quesadilla looks like there’s room to mangle it further:
KWEZZ-ah-dill-ah
or even
kwe-SADD-l’a
like there was saddle in there
Overheard in a pizzeria:
Customer: I’d like a quattro sta… quattro shta… How do you pronounce it?
The Turkish and not Italian waiter: Shtuh gon ee (for stagioni)
My family is french/english and we like to do the same with french loan words
In the army it was “Qu’est-ce que le shake?” or so, for “what’s shakin?”
I worked with a guy who did the exactly opposite, in Calgary (and that may explain a lot):
- comPLETEly fluent in French
- would only speak French by imitating those early “Bonjour Pierre!” tapes with the over-done voice pitch.
It was both impressive as hell, and funny. And he’d do this for like a few minutes at a time as part of a conversation. We’d try and get him to break but his vocab was strong (for an anglo) and he’d never break character. I fantasize about him meeting my Parisienne friend and conversing back and forth, her a little stereotypical and him a little bizarre.
Habanero is pronounced jabaññññero.
ah! WITH the doppler effect?
Even funnier because it doesn’t have the ñ.
My wife cannot say empanada. It’s empañada. The locals would always wonder why she was asking for a window.
You should go the Tralerpark Boys route for pronouncing jalapeño.
Once in a while, I’ll arbitrarily drop juh-LAP-in-oh in a grocery store, just to see who flinches.
.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.
My wife says I pronounce crayon wrong. The way she says it, it’s a single syllable word that is the same as the first syllable of cranberry. I say it as two syllables: cray-on.
Being fully honest, I’ve started drawing it out and articulating both syllables more because I know she doesn’t like it.
I say it as two syllables: cray-on.
I have never heard it pronounced any other way. Not American though (and I suppose you may not be either!).
You’re correct. It’s two syllables. My wife is from the east coast and says it like “cran” or “crown” and some people here in the Midwest say it as a single syllable.
Dictionary defines the pronunciation as two though. Crayola, the brand that (essentially) invented them, uses two syllables as well per their commercials.
The way Midwestern Americans say “roof” bothers me.
Ruff
Midwest where? I don’t know if Michigan counts but I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it that way.
My extended family from Idaho/Montana say “Ruff”.
Somewhat similarly, when they say wolf it’s said as “wuff”.
I’m thinking it was Kansas City.
I can confirm it sounds like ‘Ruff’.
