Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by 8ig8 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

8ig8

I just realized after all these years, I think I've been saying the name wrong.

In my head, I say "curl" as in curly hair. It's really "see-url"!? I think it's too late for my brain to correct that.

View on HN

That was too traumatic to contemplate, so I referred to the FAQ and found relief in section 1.1:

"We pronounce curl and cURL with an initial k sound: [kurl]."

They do, however, note that the "fact it can also be pronounced 'see URL' also helped" [to choose the name].

I did also pronounced [kurl]. Didn't notice see-URL, because of a different pronunciation on "c". :)

You think that's traumatic?

See you are ell.

Wait, is that wrong? I've only ever met a single person that pronounced URL like "Earl". Everyone else says the letters, and thus, you get "see you are ell". I tend to go back and forth with cURL, sometimes calling it "kurl".

Same problem with SQL. Is it "ess que ell" or "sequel"?

The nice thing about SQL and URL is that they're so widely used in our profession that regardless of how you say them you will be understood easily. Some people say "ess que ell" and others say "sequel" and that's fine; everyone understands everyone.

It's unconventional pronunciations of less common initialisms that cause problems.

May I lament at this point that we non native speakers often miss out on the pun entirely and read brand-/projectnames as abstract fantasy words.

SQL -> "sequel", how could we know?

"Sequel", or "skewl" when I'm in a hurry. Who has time to say "ess que ell"?

A friend of mine, who is not a fan of database work, pronounces it "squeal".

That's why I say "postgres", not "postgre sql".

What about Postgres Cue Ell?

On one occasion I overheard SQL pronounced as squeal.

Stunned into silence.

Many people use 'seaqual' if that is what you mean.. I don't think it is rare.

"Squeal", like a pig. Not "Sequel" like 'Babe: pig in the city'.

squirrel :)

Haha that's just too much... sorry.

That reminds me that I had been using sudo for close to 15 years before I realized that it was a combination of 'su' and 'do.' I'm still not sure if it's properly pronounced 'pseudo' or 'sue-doo', but it really blew my mind once I figured out the name.

Edit: Changed 'sue-do' to 'sue-doo' to make it less ambiguous.

I always though it was abbreviated of super-do - much like the other unixisms (ls, cd etc.)

> I'm still not sure if it's properly pronounced 'pseudo' or 'sue-do

Those are both pronounced the same way.

The first one is sue-doe, the second is sue-do

> Those are both pronounced the same way.

The prior is pronounced /ˈso͞odō/

The latter is pronounced /so͞odu/

in the days of yore when I learned to program in basic before learning English I pronounced goto with the second o rhyming with the first one, it embarassignly also took some time after learning English to figure out that goto was "go to" as my brain had made the programming association and wasn't treating it as a language construct at all...

Speaking about sudo, learned that before living in an English speaking country, so everybody pronounced rhyming with su-go (say) not su-do and I still pronounce it that way (which I guess it's wrong!)

ah, the joys of learning English as a written language first, even now after living in North America for nearly 20 years occasionally I find words I completely mispronounce due to having learned them from books

I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that "su" doesn't stand for superuser but for the rather bland "set uid".

why not "switch user", hah

This is a useful discovery though, as it points you towards the fact that as well as running as super user (the default) sudo can run a command as any target user (e.g. `sudo -u zofrex dosomethingevil`).

I know it's not actually true, but I choose to believe that "su" stands for superuser and "sudo" is a witty pun which means both "superuser do" and "pseudo" because you're pretending to be a superuser.

Ha me too, you are not alone. Then again I used the word exotic for esoteric for many years, I wondered why people would always deny the solution was exotic in a giggly way as i loud ranted everything was too damn exotic. etiquette was another source of laughter, at 33 i finally figured out how to say it correctly. shit happens!

Speaking of potentially ambiguous pronunciations, I recently learned that Dr. Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, pronounce it Es Que Ell-ite or Sequel-ite, the -ite postfix being inspired by minerals/rocks (like stalagmite).

Source: https://changelog.com/201/

I say 'es queue lite' and like it that way.

This is the way I've said it too, but "sequelite" is too good to give up on.

or, seek-light

It's like people who think after many years of programming that "char" is actually pronounced "care". Nope. In real life people just read things. "char" the stick in the fire all day long.

I still say 'car' in my head. Hardest one for me was 'it-erator' instead of 'eye-terator'. I still lapse and use the latter on accident out of habit!

I'm not sure how you got eye-terator, but I can sort of see where 'car' came from. I guess I'm lucky here, because I learned to always say:

'char' : as in charcoal

'car' : pronounced like a car, used as (car (cons 'a 'b))

'cdr' : supposed to be 'could-er', but I flip between cee-derr and could-er

'cadaddr' : prounounced 'why'

I kid a little, but it's funny to hear these things, especially when it's from somebody from a foreign country. It wasn't until grad school that I realized there's so many different ways to pronounce keywords.

I still say 'car' out loud and in my head because the "char" type is short for "character", and the first syllable of the full word is pronounced 'car', not 'char'.

Isn't it care-actor? I can't say car-actor without hearing a fake British accent.

It's more like cah-actor, I'd say.

... I pronounce it like "care". :(

But I also pronounce "enum" like "ee num", not "ee noom", so there is apparently no overarching theme.

I've made this mistake with LaTeX. I was so embarrassed when someone told me "Its pronounced lah-tekh".

Another one is Tuple (like in a data base)

Too pool -or- Tup ulll -or- Tup lee

So many choice from just five letters....

I'd always heard "Two Pull"s as the one true way, not to be confused with "Triple"s.

"Tup Lee" just seems silly.

Not to pick on the place that invented "Sweet Tea" and BBQ, but in the south, ya'll just need to drag out those vowels....

Tuple is a mathematical term predating computers, and the "-tuple" suffix is older again, so pronunciation shouldn't be as ambiguous as the other, newly invented terms.

(It's historically rhymed with couple)

On the other hand, a lot of Latin-originating words have had their pronunciations changed in US English, the canonical example being data (from UK English "da-ta" to US English "day-ta", which has now begun to become standard everywhere due to the tech industry) so I guess other words could go the same way.

> (It's historically rhymed with couple)

So it's true! It is pronounced with a short initial syllable. I've always pronounced it along the lines of toople.

Surely day-ta and da-ta are the wrong way round there?

Unless I've worded it confusingly, I don't think so...

Or my favorite, combining your first two choices: too-pull.

You shouldn't feel embarrassed about how you pronounce LaTeX. In the words of its creator Leslie Lamport:

> One of the hardest things about LaTeX is deciding how to pronounce it.This is also one of the few things I'm not going to tell you about LaTeX, since pronunciation is best determined by usage, not fiat. TeX is usually pronounced teck, making lah-teck, and lay-teck the logical choices; but language is not always logical, so lay-tecks is also possible.

The Knuth quotation from your link:

> Insiders pronounce the χ of TeX as a Greek chi, not as an ‘x’, so that TeX rhymes with the word blecchhh. It’s the ‘ch’ sound in Scottish words like loch or German words like ach; it’s a Spanish ‘j’ and a Russian ‘kh’. When you say it correctly to your computer, the terminal may become slightly moist.

Surely, we should be insiders.

There are two kinds of people ...

Really? I thought it was "lay-tack".

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48735/how-do-you-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com