Hacker News Reader

Comment by reduxredacted | Hacker News Reader

By the use of "an", I learned that I have been pronouncing SQLite wrong. The maintainers clearly prefer the spelling out of SQL in the title.

I've always been on the "sequel" side of pronouncing SQL (hey, it's no worse than "scuzzy" for SCSI), which morphed SQLite into "Sequelite". I never realized how bizarre that sounded (almost more like a material than a database).

View on HN

Just in case anyone cares because I did the research on this a few weeks ago (including watching its creator say it numerous times) it's S-Q-L-Lite. Yeah, that seems like a duplication of the L but there you have it.

I've always pronounced it that way in my head, which has lead to a few typos searching for "SQLlite" or coding up a "SQLliteConnection". If I'd just learned to pronounce it wrong I would have been typing it right all along.

I and most people I know call it "sequelite". That works for me...

Esquelite sounds pretty good too...

So does that become S-Q-L-ite or S-Q-Lite, you think?

Good point. I was going for SQL-Lite. But being wrong (and hearing enough people say "lie-nux" [and to be clear, I am not mocking ... we read things and form our own pronunciation because we often don't hear them said] ...) I decided to google it.

This isn't necessarily authoritative or well researched, but it appears that S-Q-L-Lite is correct: http://blog.cleverly.com/permalinks/247.html

I say "S-Q-Lite".

As an aside, to follow Linus' pronunciation, it is Lee-nucks, from the Finnish way of pronouncing "Linus." Americans are used to a different pronunciation of the same name and thus generally adopted a different way of saying "Linux."

Language is fascinating!

Linus is a native speaker of Swedish, not Finnish.

The Internets confirms this. I didn't know that; I learned something today!

The pronunciation of 'Linus' is pretty much the same in Swedish and Finnish, though.

Surely the U differs. To Sweden-Swedish ears at least, Linus in Finnish sounds like Linos.

I say S-Q-L-ite.

From what I can understand, that's actually a difference between Commonwealth and American English.

I'm Australian and always spell out acronyms when speaking them - saying something like 'sequel' or 'scuzzy' just sounds weird to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com