Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Range of disputed pronunciations

  • Mathematical and personal names:

    • “Euler” ≈ “oiler” (oil), “von Mises” vs “Mises Pieces” joke; widespread admission that German/Dutch names (Gödel, Schrödinger, Dijkstra, Huygens, Einstein) are often mangled in English.
    • Fresnel, Poisson: many pronounced phonetically until corrected; some playfully “refuse” French nasalization.

  • Core tech terms:

    • GIF: ongoing hard-G vs soft-G battle; some appeal to the creator, others ignore it.
    • regex: many options—“reg-ex”, “rej-ex”, “rezh-ex”, “ray-gex/jex”—with some arguing it should follow “regular expression”, others treating it like its own word.
    • LaTeX/TeX: debate over “LAH-tek”, “LAY-tek”, stress placement, and whether to honor the Greek χ sound; some reject pedantry for the sake of communication with non-technical people.
    • Linux and Linus: “lih-nux”, “lee-nooks”, “lie-nix”; audio clips from Linus exist, but people still vary.
    • Azure: multiple regional forms (ah-zure vs ay-zure etc.), with confusion especially outside Anglophone countries.
    • cache: cash, “cach-ay”, “caysh”; Australia/NZ note local variants.

  • Other terms mentioned: tuple (too-pul/tupple), idempotent, homogeneous, Redis, nginx, Xfce, PNG, JWT (“jot”), GNU (noo, g-noo, “gee en you”), SQL/SQLite/PostgreSQL, JSON, NumPy/SciPy, vi/vim, SIEM, repo, pypi, etc., with examples of every variant someone has actually heard.

Regional and linguistic influences

  • Several comments tie pronunciation to native language phonetics (e.g., German speakers on “ch”, languages where “gn” is natural).
  • English-specific rules (silent g in “gn”, silent k in “kn”) explain why many drop consonants in GNU-like words.
  • Country/dialect differences (US vs Australia vs NZ vs Germany) are cited for vowels (Azure, mobile, repo, cache).

Authority vs common usage

  • Some defer strongly to creators’ pronunciations (GIF, regex originator, Knuth on TeX, SQLite creator, GNU/JWT videos).
  • Others argue that once a term spreads, normal spelling and local phonology should govern, not original intent.

Attitudes toward mispronunciation

  • Range from joking disgust (“nails on a chalkboard”) to strong sympathy: mispronunciation often means someone learned by reading.
  • Several people prefer writing about programming to avoid awkwardness.
  • Many share nostalgic or humorous stories (BBS “sis-op”, “hotmail files”, “pup” for PHP, “squeal” for SQL) as harmless quirks.

Meta

  • Multiple commenters note the thread was flagged and question why, given it’s on-topic and culturally revealing.