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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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