On the pronunciation of “fsck” | Hacker News Reader

On the pronunciation of “fsck”

hachyderm.io

62 pointstrelane76 comments

Related ongoing thread:

The many faces of fsck (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38668181 - Dec 2023 (25 comments)

These "how it's pronounced" thing are funny. It's pronounced how it's written, because 99.999% of people won't bother to figure out what the correct, non-written pronunciation is. If you can't pronounce it, it's an abbreviation and it's not meant to be pronounced. It's like The RZA. I call him R.Z.A not Riza cause that ain't how that shit is written. If you wanna be called Riza, call yourself Riza, don't make me fill in the blanks or extrapolate, that's not how reading works.

That attitude only really works in languages spelled consistently. English has far more ridiculous spelling, like Leicester for example.

Ah yes, reminds me of my favourite meat flavoring ingredient, the Wurstwrsrcer sauce.

Let us not forget colonel and (in UK English) lieutenant (relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-19...).

Worcestershire sauce

I don't care how these people want me to say their name. Worcester is like Manchester but with wor instead of man for me.

That reminds me of a joke about someone calling for an ambulance because a friend was injured and incapacitated. The 911 dispatcher asked for their location, and the caller saw that they were on Worcestershire Street. Being unable to pronounce the word, they dragged the body over to Pine Street and continued the call.

I just call it in my southern drawl “what’s this here, sauce”

Am I the only one thinking of the famous The Three Stooges bit right now?

American English is a bit more sane than British English. Noah Webster and other american dictionary publishers change a lot of spellings to be closer to their pronunciation.

I don’t think there is a meaningful difference.

American English still indulges etymological and traditional spellings for heaps of words. In cases like “fillet” and “valet” American English goes with “French” pronunciation.

> In cases like “fillet” and “valet” American English goes with “French” pronunciation.

I recall seeing an American somewhere in France getting frustrated when hotel staff couldn't understand what he meant by "maître-d", with his emphasis increasingly placed on the 'dee' as he got more and more annoyed.

(disclaimer: Brit here, not defending our pronunciation of Worcestershire)

Thank you for the hilarious image of an obnoxious American tourist shouting "I need to talk to the Mater DEE!" at a baffled Frenchman.

> (disclaimer: Brit here, not defending our pronunciation of Worcestershire)

The Americans typically pronounce it some form of "Wooshishurr".

I used to live in Massachusetts, and my wife would complain about the British-inspired place names and their local pronunciation. "I'm from Louisiana, I can't with your New England names! There's no 'lemon' in Leominster!"

I would gently remind her of how 'Natchitoches' is pronounced; it's certainly not as written.

The North Americans got their own back on me on one trip when I asked for a glass of 'water'. I increased my southern English accent until I was saying 'wart-er'. I then realised that I needed to say 'wadder' and then it worked; service with big smiles all round.

> In cases like “fillet” and “valet” American English goes with “French” pronunciation.

British English is even less consistent, using the French pronunciation of "valet" for one of its two meanings and the Anglicized pronunciation for the other meaning.

Yes. I knowingly chose the example.

If you want a less controversial example use the word “one” and consider the voiced labial–velar approximant.

In England, most people say less-tur, in Leicester it's less-tarr ...

That’s the differentiator between an initialism and an acronym: acronyms are intended to be pronounced as a word, initialisms are read out individually. NASA vs DoD e.g.

This is an odd bone to pick with someone who constantly pronounces their name in their music.

How do you pronounce Riza?

Is the "i" pronounced as in "I", the pronoun? Or as "ee"? What about the "R"? Is it an "r" like in the English language, with the tongue folded towards the back of the palate? Is it a rolling "r" like it's common in Spanish, Portuguese and many other languages? Is it a scratch sound produced by pressing the back of the tongue against the soft palate like it's common in Portuguese, Hebrew and others?

You pronounce Riza the same way you pronounce any other name; whichever way feels most natural to you the speaker. If the person with that name wants you to pronounce it another way, they'll tell you (and if they aren't in earshot, then it doesn't matter.) Pronunciations are clarified using this simple social protocol.

About half the people I encounter pronounce my last name "wrong", I correct them if I'm in the mood to care, and that's it.

How's that any different from the RZA example then?

I'm answering the question "How do I pronounce ...?" The procedure is the same for any name or technical term. You pronounce it however you feel is best (which will mean different people pronounce it in different ways.) Then if anybody feels strongly about it, a simple social protocol is used to negotiate a different pronunciation. It's not any different, it works the same for any pronunciation ambiguity.

My post was in response to

> If you wanna be called Riza, call yourself Riza, don't make me fill in the blanks or extrapolate, that's not how reading works.

Your post is "technically correct - the best kind of correct". Unfortunately, it doesn't add anything at all to the discussion. Thanks for the effort but at least in my case, it only served to increase confusion a little.

Much of your point is how an artist chooses to spell their name is wrong and how you'd like to read it as correct.

I get it, it's a bit annoying but nothing worth the effort of squeezing.

That was the point of the parent of my original comment. My point was exactly the one you're making.

It rhymes with GZA

It's pronounced like "charisma" without the "cha" or the "m."

IDK. Artist should be allowed to take liberties, be creative, etc. That's why their artists. It's not like RZA or Riza is his government name.

…but the RZA says his name as “Riza” on 36 chambers. Thats like someone saying “hi my name is Richard” and you say “hi Dick”

PS I am part of the f-sick camp

If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous.

Bring the motherfscking ruckus!

This comment is "ignorance is a bliss" exemplified.

If RZA calls himself "riza" then that be how is pronounced.

My name is "eegor" not "eyegor" is not what you want to call things is how they are pronounced.

That's not how it works. If some popular YouTuber calls you "eyegor", then that will be how your name is pronounced.

No, if Riza writes RZA and calls it Riza then he is free to call RZA Riza others are not obliged to. Abbreviation is abbreviation. But Riza calls Riza as “Rieyazza”, why? well, whims and fancy, then maybe that can work out.

Besides I don’t fsck calls itself something unless we are talking about AI or some shit.

For example I never call GUI “Gooey” but others do and that’s fine.

Neither GUI nor RZA is an acronym really unless we plan to make every abbreviation an acronym.

I'm going to start a new company, call it Meta Fucks Disney, but it's pronounced "pshaw", you can be my lawyer.

That approach works if you mostly see the word written, rather than hear it spoken.

If you spend most of your time immersed in text and not much time immersed in speech, you might develop a bias towards thinking the written word is the primary form.

For “fsck” you could make a case that it comes from a primarily written culture.

May I recommend Wales as a lovely vacation spot for you?

I'm guessing you don't like French...

If I was to try, probably "Are-Za".

However I suspect that would quickly evolve in to "Arse".

Do you also refuse to call him Bobby Digital, The Abbot, etc?

My guy, he and his friends constantly pronounce their names for you in their songs.

> I call him R.Z.A not Riza cause that ain't how that shit is written.

I know rza is wholly unaffected by your pronunciation of his name, but I implore you to rethink this behavior with people actually in your life.

Pronounce other peoples names the way THEY want you to, anything else is just narcissistic.

`fscheck (berkley)` made sense for me, as does "an u where the s in, now": `fuck`. Or better: unfuck, would be a good program name, since someting is fucked up, we let's try to repair it?

When I was supporting an iPad rollout, I first encountered “DFU” (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode, useful for recovering a bricked device.

I of course started referring to it as “Done Fucked Up” mode; I somehow suspect I wasn’t the first to do so.

Mojang wrote a DFU system called Data Fixer Upper.

It is open source, peggs the CPU at 100% on startup for about a minute, doubles game launch time, references 10 research papers, sometimes corrupts the world, and is so abstract only the author knows how it works - all to upgrade game worlds to new versions.

It is often called Data Fucker Upper.

I had a friend who was an Apple service tech at a local computer store, and that's what he called it as well. I thought it was apt as you don't usually need to enter that mode unless you've DFU.

I pronounce it "fsck", without a vowel, like "pssssst" when calling someone.

English has vowel-less words! A few, at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_without_vowels#A....

It is definitely supposed to rhyme with the expletive you say when you have to manually call it.

I've always said it as "fusk", which is close to "fisk". In a professional context I've always called it fs-check though.

eff ess see kay is how i've always said / thought it

I started using Linux in 1996 and it was years before I met another Linux user, so I didn't run into other peoples' interpretation for quite some time. And missed out initially on the cultural stuff.

I've always pronounced this "fisk," but my first iPod had the engraving "Bad Mother Fscker" -- because Apple wouldn't let you do the other, but "Fscker" slid right through.

It has always been "f suck" to me.

Same. f-suck. fsuck.

Pronunciation of "computer words" is always a fun read to hear how people say things. (Weirdly, MMORPG's have this for me, too; different place names, mostly.)

My secondhand contribution is a friend told me HIS colleague used to pronounce the `vi` editor as "six", because of course. Took him awhile to figure out what the guy meant when he said, "six the <whatever> file"...

I’ve always known fsck to mean “file system check” (I guess there’s officially a “consistency” in there), and while I can believe it was retconnned, what I still don’t understand from the post is what the original, cheekier version actually abbreviated or where the “u” came from.

(Though maybe, in the “GNU's Not Unix” vein, that is the joke?)

I assumed fsck was chosen on purpose because it's the tool you use when something was "f*cked" with your FS

I guess I'm boring. I've been calling it "eff ess check" for decades.

I always said f-sock.

No clue where I got that from.

I maintain that "wiki" should be pronounced "weekee"

It's a Hawaiian word, so I would defer to their pronunciation

This person gets it.

ive never said it out loud I think, but internally I say «fs-check»

Now do JIRA. (none of my colleagues pronounce it correctly)

As a start the product name is written as "Jira"

I've always heard "jee rah" and it's very close to the way french coworkers used to pronounce it in french too.

If I'm not mistaken Atlassian Jira promotional vids and tutorials do say "jee rah" too.

And FWIW, not a very reliable source but ChatGPT says it's that too if you ask it.

Are people saying "jie ray"?

I had never considered that there might be other ways to pronounce it. I’m gonna start saying it “zhee-rá” now

Apparently it is based on Japanese characters, so I guess you have to go to that language to get the correct pronunciation.

I dunno, though, it would be more fun to pronounce it like “He-ra”

Jira (/ˈdʒiːrə/ JEE-rə) says wikipedia, I had it right :)

Jira's name comes from the Japanese name of Godzilla (ゴジラ, Gojira). Reason why is because it was intended to be a "Bugzilla killer". I have never heard anyone pronounce Jira incorrectly, always like "Jeera".

as a truncation of Gojira (go jee rah), i assume it is "jee rah" as others have stated here.

Yee-Ra, like Javascript is yava-script.

[1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

Less appropriate these days with journalling filesystems.

at the CS lab i cut my teeth in, in anger it was called “fuch sachy” (rounded u)

Had a friend say “sin” and “sout” for cin and cout in c++ class in high school. That usually led to arguments during our 10 minute compile times

Ah, so that's why people are chair fencing during compile times.

I remember pronouncing those like "sin" and "kout".

Huh? Simply "eff-ess-sea-kay"

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