Hacker News Reader

Comment by iandinwoodie | Hacker News Reader

Out of genuine curiosity, does anyone know how to pronounce the name of this project? I checked the “About Coq” page on the official website, the top-level README in the project’s repository, and the project’s Wikipedia but failed to find any suggested phonetics. There also doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer on the related English Stack Exchange post I found (link: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/435117/how-is-co...)

View on HN

From coq FAQ:

Did you really need to name it like that?

Some French computer scientists have a tradition of naming their software as animal species: Caml, Elan, Foc or Phox are examples of this tacit convention. In French, “coq” means rooster, and it sounds like the initials of the Calculus of Constructions CoC on which it is based.

https://coq.inria.fr/V8.1/faq.html#htoc4

Also, Thierry Coquand, who is behind CoC, and is also one of the developers of the software that became Coq.

It's pronounced cock, coq means rooster/cock in French.

Very interesting. So we can derive the phonetics from those provided for coq au vin (/ˌkɒk oʊ ˈvæ̃/), which I have apparently been mispronouncing for a while.

The o sound is slightly different. More like the first o in bottom

That sounds the same to my ear. At least the way I pronounce both words. c-awe-ck and b-awe-ttom.

I believe in most North American dialects "corn" is one of the only open "o" in common usage. Try to pronounce an "o" without ending it in a "w" sound. Just holding it longer... and then stop without closing your lips.

You can listen here for the difference, https://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/search?source=auto&q....

with French pronunciation on top, English beneath.

The general answer to "how to pronounce word X in language Y" is https://forvo.com/. In this case: https://forvo.com/word/coq/#fr

Reply on news.ycombinator.com