mgroves

One of the interesting phenomena arising from the web and its widespread use by programmers is a disconnect between technical words/jargon and how to pronounce them. If you read a word instead of hearing it from someone, you still make up an arbitrary pronunciation. This can make for awkward moments when the word finally does come up between programmers in person (which does happen, honest!).

Here are some examples.  Read them aloud:

• Tuple
• C#
• SQL
• CAPTCHA
• WSDL
• GUID
• .GIF
• pwned
• char
• varchar

I’ve heard all of the above terms pronounced at least two different ways.  GIF even has a long history of controversy about its pronunciation.  I think I’ve heard ‘varchar’ pronounced about 6 different ways (vair/var + care/car/char).

So, what to do? Even if you are sure that “Tuple” is pronounced “toople” instead of “tupple”, it seems petty and annoying to call someone incorrect.  If the intent is understood, then I guess it comes down to a matter of prescriptive vs descriptive linguistics. If you lean towards descriptive linguistics, then it really doesn’t matter if you pronounce CAPTCHA as “cuh-pahtch-uh”, as long as your audience knows what you’re talking about. If you are in the prescriptive camp, then C# must be ‘see-sharp’, and ‘see-pound’ is unacceptable.

Personally, I would lean towards descriptive, so long as there is no possibility of ambiguity. However, I totally sympathize for the prescriptive’s point of view, since in many cases, the pronunciation is not emergent, but defined (as in GIF’s case).

So, what are some other terms (computer-related or otherwise), that have put you into a similar awkward situation?

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