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Comment by lusis | Hacker News Reader

Ummm. There absolutly is a correct pronunciation for Linux. Any person who's been involved with it for more than 10 years will remember the AIFF file floating around:

"My name is Leenus Torvalds and I pronounce Leenux, Leenux"

And while there's some slack on how to pronounce SQL (because of the origins (QUEL from Stonebraker and then the whole SEQUEL/SQL issue), it's understandable and acceptable that people could pronounce it either way.

However with Linux, given that the author is named Linus and has named it after himself, I think it's fair to say, Leenux is the proper way.

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But I don't pronounce hardly any of the words {hello, this, is, Linus, Torvalds, and, I, pronounce, as} the same way he does, so why should I pronounce "Linux" the same way? (In other words, pronunciations are localized.)

According to Linus it is pronounced lihnux

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

I hear Lenux more often than Leenux, though I have to say my preference is Leenux, given that his name is Leenus.

I said Lie-nux for the first 5 years or so that it was around, based on the way I read his name as an American. I could be ok with Lie-nux or Leenux, but I've never agreed with Lenux.

The only reason he says it that way is because of his accent. And SQL stands for Structured Query Language you fucking idiot, there is no pronunciation.

I would say that you're absolutely right: "Hello, this is Leee-nooos Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as 'Leee-noox'."

However: most English-speakers, Americans in particular, are not going to adopt Linus' accent when pronouncing the name -- although, as I said, I completely agree with that logic. There is no logical justification I've ever heard for the pronunciation of Linux as "Lih-nux".

On the other hand: it doesn't matter how you pronounce it. It's just a name. We have more important problems to solve! :-)

Actually, no. this is the most important problem I have to solve today ;) Thanks for not taking it too personal heh

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