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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Try to say Graphics with a soft G.

That's not exactly difficult to do, though it would be spelled "draphics".

It's difficult to see what this is supposed to be relevant to; acronyms are never given pronunciations taken from their hidden constituent words. Try to say "stimulated" with a /z/ (as in "LASER").

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> Try to say "stimulated" with a /z/ (as in "LASER").

Yup, and there are plenty of others too:

SCUBA - U as in uh-nderwater

SIM / VIN - I as in I-dentification

YOLO - second O as in wuh-nce

CAPTCHA - first A as in aw-tomated

AWOL - soft a-bsent

ICE - ih-mmigration and Customs Enforcement

NATO - soft A-tlantic

OCONUS - ow-tside

OSHA - ah-ccupational

SCOTUS / POTUS - uh-f

AIDS - a-cquired

It's really a long list if you look. I vote for GIF with a J sound.

It bothers me a little that all of your examples are vowels. Especially when you include OSHA in the list of examples. It's not the Shafety and Shealth Administration.

One consonant example: CUNY is pronounced with a hard C, but we don't say "New York Kitty"

That's a really good point. It seems like most English consonants have roughly one way to pronounce them, particular as a first letter in a word as in an acronym. I guess I should've looked for acronyms built on Ch, Ph, Sh, Th, Wh, Ph, hard or soft C's, and of course hard or soft G's (ginger, gypsy).

Here's a soft G word making a hard G acronym, and a hard G word making a soft G acronyn:

    GAD - Generalized Anxiety Disorder
    GEMA - Gas and Electric Markets Authority

Some other non-G examples:

    PAL - Phase Alternating Line
    PAWS - Phased Array Warning System
    SWF - ShockWave Flash

They're much harder to find though.

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