From: "Malcolm Dean" <malcolmdean@earthlink.net> To: <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> Subject: Linux pronunciation Date: Tue, 1999-08-31 13:56:36 -0700 I'd like you to have (and consider) the attached response to an article in Linux Journal, September 1999, p. 14 (not online so I can't send it to you). The magazine did a web search for "Linux" and "Linus" then analyzed in a table the most common phoneticizations of Linux, commenting that "Linn-ucks appears to be the winner!" My Letter to the Editor, which follows, contains several historical facts which should be considered when publishing a suggested pronunciation for Linux. .............................................................. Hey, kids, let's change some of the C language! Yeah, sure, let's just decide to replace some words with our own words. What? What do you mean we can't do that? I'm sure it's obvious to everyone that a few people can't simply change a portion of a widely agreed language or standard. What stuns me is how the computer community -- so savvy about its own standards -- widely ignores the existing standards of English grammar and pronunciation. Your September article surveying pronunciations of Linux recorded on the Web, while an interesting survey of contemporary pronunciation, demonstrates this common ignorance. But it did contain one valuable revelation. English pronunciation has rules, just as any computer language does. Although imperfect, they are necessary to help avoid the language descending into chaos, and to help readers know how to pronounce words. In Standard English pronunciation the second vowel "u" makes the first vowel "i" long. Thus in the word "line" we do not say "linn-ee." (Indeed, in this example, the "n" is doubled to indicate that the vowel is a short "i" pronounced "ih," so if we were discussing "Linnux" the first vowel would be short.) The article's revelation that Torvalds was named after the American scientist Linus Pauling puts the final nail in the coffin for the "Linn-ucks" camp. Linus has always been pronounced "Line-us" because the name was absorbed into English, and became pronounced according to the rules of standard English pronunciation. No one ever called Dr. Pauling "Linn-us." Even in its original language, the name was NEVER pronounced with a short "i", as "Lih." Readers should note that Linus Torvalds, Maddog and several others from the early days adhere to their own pronunciation which I have not seen noted elsewhere. As clearly heard at LinuxWorld during their speeches, they actually pronounce Linux as "Linnix," not "Linnux." This may result from the OS's origin in the OS Minix and the "ix" in Unix. (Note that we do not say "Oo-nix.") The manner in which this debate has proceeded is significant. At LinuxWorld, vendors were heard loudly mocking attendees who innocently used their English language background and correctly pronounced the OS as "Line-ucks." Along with the author of your article, many seem to feel that pronunciation is simply "received," meaning that the way they hear many individuals pronounce it makes it right. This is obviously not true. Although English is a living language, we are not freed from the duty of occasionally weeding the verbal garden. A worse example is the common mispronunciation of the word "router" as "raowter." The word comes from the French phase "en route," pronounced "on root." Until the mid-1980s, the standard American and English pronunciation of this word was "root," as evidenced by the pronunciation of the popular US television show "Route 66." When Local Area Networks became common technology, introduced by companies populated with engineers from the American South and West, the origin of the word and its correct pronunciation were displaced by the Southwestern regional pronunciation, which has now infested even television shows such as Star Trek Voyager ("Re-raowt power to the shields!"). To adopt this pronunciation is to deliberately bury the history of the phrase. (Clearly the show's producers do not realize how bizarre this pronunciation sounds outside the American Southwest.) It is understandable that many individuals with a strong engineering and computer background are weak in English, just as many with a background in languages are weak in mathematics. One can sympathize with their plight since standard English pronunciation is infrequently or poorly taught these days. But it is impossible to sympathize with the authors of many key documents in our industry such as the foundation documents of the Internet, the Requests for Comments (RFCs). From the beginning, these documents are full of spelling and grammatical errors, yet each came from academic or commercial organizations large and sufficiently prosperous to afford editing and proofreading services. Had they understood the errors of their linguistic ways, these scientists would surely have behaved differently. So this is how the debate has proceeded -- without background, investigation or scholarship. Your article concludes that the web survey of pronunciations is "inconclusive" and that the pronunciation "Linn-ucks" appears to be the winner. Winner? Correct pronunciation is no contest. At least those in the industry responsible for using the English language to discuss the languages of computers should accept their responsibility to make this clear. It's "Line-ucks," and you've helped prove it. :-) ______________________________________________________________________________ From: Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> To: Malcolm Dean <malcolmdean@earthlink.net> Sent: Tuesday, 1999-10-19 03:00 Subject: Pronunciation of Linux What about this /lee'nuhks/? Sounds like nonsense to me. ______________________________________________________________________ From: Malcolm Dean <malcolmdean@earthlink.net> To: Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Linux Date: Thu, 1999-11-04 15:42:37 -0800 To my knowledge, no one is saying Lee-nucks, except that if the pronunciation was based on the Finnish pronunciation of Linus, that would be correct, which was my point. Since Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, I believe this substantiates my claim that Line-ucks is the correct pronunciation. (I think this should be added to your final paragraph.) In that, I participate in a miniscule minority. So miniscule that Linux Journal has maintained radio silence on my transmission. Strangely, the vast majority of computer types express puzzlement when they hear that English has some rules of pronunciation. This is not a strange concept when it comes to dialects of C, for example, where they unquestioningly accept standards and authorities. But as for English, they widely assume that it is first come, first served, and pile on! You're welcome to publish my article (actually an unpublished Letter to the Editor). I object to this widespread stupidity sufficiently to want the issue kept alive somewhere on the Web. Your first paragraph finds me at a disadvantage. I'm not sure what /li: sounds like. Every dictionary I have appears to have a different method of marking pronunciation, and worse, some of them publish the common east coast American dialect, instead of the standard pronunciation based on the spelling, which is closer to English Canadian and Englandischer English. (For your possible amusement, my favorite example is "buouy" and "buoyancy." In America, common clods say "boo-ee" instead of "boy" and become confused when reading the word "buoyancy," trying to pronounce it as "boo-ee-an-see.") Bob (Ethernet) Metcalfe writes in InfoWorld, 1999-11-11, p.110 that the "X" in Linux comes from MIT's Multics TSO, but I read that Linus was working with Minix before he decided to start his own OS. I've e-mailed Metcalfe <metcalfe@idg.net> asking for a source. Later, I hope to extract from Linus and Maddog an admission that, like the authors of RFCs, the key documents of the Internet, they never bothered to consult someone with a background in English (or even a spell-checker), and that IN THEIR MINDS, they were thinking of Linnix (as a variant of You-nix), and not Line-ucks (as a variant of Linus U.X.), and simply misspelled the word. During their talks at San Jose LinuxWorld, both of them repeatedly said "Linnix." Re your list of current support for Linux, I just attended SGI's Linux University here in Los Angeles. They are going ahead like their lives depended on it (which it does), and the number of major database vendors releasing Linux versions grows daily. So I'd suggest not mentioning a few major vendors, as this list looks badly outdated even today. The juggernaut is upon us already. Windows begins its slide into obsolescence once 2000 is released. ______________________________________________________________________ Malcolm Dean wrote: The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing http://foldoc.org/ is researching an entry on Linux, including its pronunciation. I have contributed to this entry. My understanding of the "X" is that it came from Minix. In fact, if you listen closely to Linus and Maddog, they say "Linnix" not "Linux." Can you refer me to documentation or a source regarding Multics and the origin of Linux? ______________________________________________________________________ From: Bob Metcalfe <Metcalfe@idg.net> To: Malcolm Dean <malcolmdean@earthlink.net> Sent: Friday, 1999-11-05 8:47 AM Subject: Re: Multics as "X" in Linux You'll have to check with the experts, but Unix is a play on Multics, and Linux is a Unix clone written by Linus Torvalds, hence Linux, so the X from Linux comes from Multics. ______________________________________________________________________ From: "Malcolm Dean" <malcolmdean@earthlink.net> To: <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> Subject: Fw: Multics as "X" in Linux Date: Fri, 1999-11-05 09:56:32 -0800 Hmmm ... a thin argument, I think, since he was apparently unaware of Minix's role in this linguistic multibabble. But it's interesting to hear that Unix is a play on Multics. Have you heard that before? ______________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:29:42 GMT From: Jason Smith <jsmith@yahoo.com> To: Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> Subject: Pronunciation Dogma I am responding to a Letter to the Editor that is referenced in the Linux entry regarding pronunciation. I know it's old, but I just came across it, and it pains me. The pain is caused by seeing self-professed purveyors of Standard American English Grammar a) Spout their doctrine as if they get to determine which rules do and do not apply and therefore how a word should be pronounced, and yet b) have a very incomplete understanding of what they're spouting about. Here's an excerpt: > English pronunciation has rules, just as any computer language > does. Although imperfect, they are necessary to help avoid the > language descending into chaos, and to help readers know how to > pronounce words. In Standard English pronunciation the second > vowel "u" makes the first vowel "i" long. Thus in the word "line" > we do not say "linn-ee." (Indeed, in this example, the "n" is > doubled to indicate that the vowel is a short "i" pronounced "ih," > so if we were discussing "Linnux" the first vowel would be short.) It would indeed be lovely if this were true one-hundred percent of the time. Yet, at best, English orthography (written English, which is really what we're talking about here) is only about 80% predictable. I'm quite certain the person quoted above would not pronounce 'linen' as 'line - in' (also see 'lipid', 'livid', 'limit', etc). In fact, when teaching phonics to people learning to read, the rule is typically stated 'vowel - consonant - e' makes the vowel long, and note that this even more stringent rule is still broken by 'linen'. When English readers are faced with a novel word with the consonant- vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant (CVCVC) shape, they have two equally legitimate options for parsing the word and deciding which print-syllable gets the middle consonant. If they decide to parse it as CVC VC, then the first vowel is 'short' ('ih', in this case). If they come up with CV CVC, then the first vowel is 'long' ('eye'). As far as I know (and this is a year and a half since that letter was written), it seems the people have chosen 'lih-nuhks'. Additionally, even the hip-geek diatribe of "Hey, Linux is derived from Linus, so it's 'line-uhks'", smacks of typical Americocentric uninformed elitism. If you were to ask Mr. Torvalds which was a closer pronunciation of his name, 'line - us' or 'lih - nus', I'm 99% positive he'd pick the latter, as the 'ih' and 'ee' are extremely similar in articulation and thus acoustic pattern. The 'eye' is a diphthong, which is acoustically quite distinct from /ih/ and /ee/ due to its starting out as the /a/ vowel as in 'father'. Should American bastardization of the name Linus determine the pronunciation of Linux for the rest of the world? Nope. Oddly, what it all comes down to is that rules just won't (didn't) matter, because the rules have no clear result. Because this word was primarily distributed first via text, without an accompanying spoken model or prior precedent of pronunciation, the various communities of users each determined their own pronunciation (dialectal variation). If one final form has come out, then it was determined by the dominant group (I believe it's called 'peer pressure'). As the grammarians have always been so loath to admit, mob rules when it comes to spoken language. ______________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: The "Linux" pronounciation dogma continues From: tekjunky <tekjunky@cfl.rr.com> To: Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> Date: 2001-11-27 23:31:31 -0500 On Tue, 2001-11-27 at 19:00, Denis Howe wrote: > I admit that my first reaction to the idea that one > should be able to deduce the pronunciation of a word from > rules was also scepticism. There are suggestive common > examples of both long I (liner, Linus, minus, sinus) or > short I (Berliner, linen, terminus). Interestingly, the > word "minute" has both long and short I pronunciations. Well, yes, there are rules for spelling/pronunciation in english. I don't think anybody debates that really. The thing we often forget is the exception to the rule. For almost every rule there is an exception. The fact that Linux is not a word at all though places this debate in another ballpark so to speak. If "Linux" had been a word that desribed something or suggesting action as an adjective or verb it would be different but in truth we are talking about a proper name not a word. I may be wrong here as I am no college graduate, but I believe that this removes any pronunciation limitations and definite pronunciation can only be truely set by its creator. This then would be a matter for Linus Torvalds to answer. If this was not so then my family name's pronunciation could be set by a committee of people I have never met many states away in a debate similar to this one. I dislike that idea very much. P.S. Please add this dialog to the page at: http://foldoc.org/pub/linux-pronunciation as I am very interested in hearing others thoughts on my point as well. Thank You David Dreggors (Still safely pronounced Dregg-ors :~) ______________________________________________________________________ From: Alx5000 <alx5000@hotmail.com> To: dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk Subject: Linux Pronunciation Date: Tue, 2002-04-30 23:51:03 +0200 [Every six months it seems someone has to drop his or her eyes on this page, now it's apparently my turn :) ] I've seen arguments all over the net about the pronunciation of the word "Linux". First of all, since I'm Spanish, I DO have to complain about the "Americanization" of that word. Isn't it Finnish? Why are you discussing about ENGLISH pronunciation and grammar? Anyway, the right pronunciation is /linnuks/. Not because I say so, because Linus does. Some years ago he released a recoding, a short .wav, with the word "Hello, my name is Linux Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux". You could clearly hear /linnuks/ (or /li:nux, I don't really care, I just hate the "Line-us" thing :) ). I'd like this to be posted on http://foldoc.org/pub/misc/linux-pronunciation if possible. Thanks. Alex Villar ______________________________________________________________________ Denis Howe: The recording I heard was either poorly recorded or Linus was mumbling and it was impossible to tell how he pronounced Linux. ______________________________________________________________________ From: K艡i拧tof 沤elechovski <giecrilj@stegny.2a.pl> Date: 2013-10-23 21:41 The word "Linux" was absorbed into English, therefore it is being discussed as part of the English language. It is customary for languages to adopt foreign words and to adapt them to their own rules. I am sure this holds for Spanish too. I would like the mail from alx5000@hotmail.com Tue 22:51:35 2002-04-30 to be removed from http://foldoc.org/pub/misc/linux-pronunciation because it does not contribute anything to the discussion. Best regards, Chris ______________________________________________________________________