How do you pronounce Linux

How do you pronounce Linux

Posted Oct 28, 2005 20:09 UTC (Fri) by amazingblair (subscriber, #2789)
In reply to: How do you pronounce Linux by jschrod
Parent article: The Battle for Wesnoth hits 1.0

Joachim,

You're quite right about my anglo-centricism regarding this pronunciation issue, I must admit. (And your deciphering of my quick-and-dirty glyphs is perfect.) It's interesting that "Gnu" has two syllables in German, and fitting. In English, however, it's an ugly sound and stands out as unnatural. Funny how the same sounds in a different language setting can have a different effect, but that's the case. /guh-noo/ is cringe-inducing in English, to those with a sensitive ear. :-)

Besides, Richard Stallman is an English-speaking American. He invented Gnu the project. He's exactly the sort of geek who would come up with the wrong (for English) pronunciation of the word. Probably played Dungeons & Dragons and pronounced "scepter" and "specter" BOTH as /skep-tur/! Ha!

On a side note: it never occurred to me that "Freax" might be pronounced the same as "freaks". Looking at the two-syllable model of Unix, Minix, Linux, etc, I took Freax to be something like "Free-axe", another linguistic whopper. The name Linux is so clever, combining Linus with Unix. So "Free-axe" would combine Free with the -x from Unix. But "Freaks"? That doesn't imply anything but oddity on display! Oh well... as I say, glad he opted for Linux.

-Herr Blair

---

(Log in to post comments)