Hacker News Reader

Comment by pithon | Hacker News Reader

It sounds strange when my colleagues refer to a class in Python having an a-TRIB-ute rather than an ATT-tri-bute. I'm familiar with the verb form stressing the middle syllable and the noun form stressing the first.

View on HN

I hear this pronunciation every now and then from gamers too. I suspect this happens when people learn the word from reading instead of from listening to the speech of their peers. If it becomes common enough then it spreads via speech patterns too.

I (native English speaker) somehow learned the verb "attribute" first, and went on to play Dungeons and Dragons for years referring to aTTRIButes, which normalized it throughout the neighborhood.

It took me rather a long time to shake it, in fact. These things happen!

The outro on MC Frontalot's Charisma Potion covers this! https://open.spotify.com/track/21HeW6fxCl02b3gcvf1TIC?si=9fb...

Speaking of python, how do you pronounce "import"? I pronounce it as IM-port. According to the rule that makes it a noun, but shouldn't it be a verb? I wonder if I'm pronouncing it correctly.

British English speaker:

    import foo

"im-PORT foo"

"foo is an IM-port"

"this code im-PORTs foo"

When you use it as a verb it should have the stress on the second syllable, /imˈpôrt/ as a verb, /ˈimˌpôrt/ as a noun. It's probably one of the more common mispronunciations. The number one mispronunciation, though, has to be “often” (look it up). With forte, meaning strength, as number two.

Non-native speaker here, but I pronounce both the verb and the noun as IM-port

Yes. They're doing it wrong according to this rule.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com