How do you pronounce Linux [LWN.net]

How do you pronounce Linux

Posted Oct 9, 2005 12:16 UTC (Sun) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
In reply to: How do you pronounce Linux by emj
Parent article: The Battle for Wesnoth hits 1.0

Oh, I don't know about Japanese, but my Spanish and Swedish acquaintances pronounce Freak as I do in German: the English way. For us, freak is a foreign word that has been incorporated into our languages and is part of our everyday speech.

Proper names like Linus or Linux are a different thing, though. There are both American folks with that name (Linus Pauling comes immediately to mind), as well as it is a common name in the scandinavian countries. (With very different pronounciation, of course. :-) Anyhow, I have to say that I don't know where the *.au files of Linus are and that I have never listened to them. Having been in in the North often enough, I know how they pronounce it there. :-)

Cheers, Joachim

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How do you pronounce Linux

Posted Oct 28, 2005 20:09 UTC (Fri) by amazingblair (guest, #2789) [Link]

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