Facks and meems

October 29, 2010 8:38 AM

How do you say these geeky terms?
posted by morganannie (80 comments total)

"Meh-tah" filter
"Mee-Fight"
posted by The Whelk at 8:41 AM on October 29, 2010 [8 favorites]

I've always pronounced Cthulhu as k-TOO-loo in a guttural way. Sort of a Klingon kind of thing.

I will go geek elsewhere now.
posted by Splunge at 8:42 AM on October 29, 2010

mē'fīt
posted by everichon at 8:44 AM on October 29, 2010

And they forgot vee eye. Thin gruel.
posted by everichon at 8:45 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Now pronounce 'fhtagn.'
posted by shakespeherian at 8:45 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Whatever happened with that pronunciation survey?
posted by morganannie at 8:45 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Though in these modern times I pronounce it "vim".
posted by everichon at 8:45 AM on October 29, 2010

They got Enix wrong-- using the katakana as a guide, it's definitely "ennix." Seems to be a case where the US hand doesn't know what the Japanese hand is doing.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:46 AM on October 29, 2010

Let's call the whole thing off.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:47 AM on October 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

How do you say IRC?

To catch a preditor
posted by stormpooper at 8:50 AM on October 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

Maybe the square-enix hotline voice was that of a heavy emacs user, who most definitely does not use emmacks.
posted by thoughtless at 8:51 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

shakespeherian: "Now pronounce 'fhtagn."

Fu-TAN the second syllable is spoken with the back of the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth causeing a slight expulsion of air through the nose.

What's that noise? Oh no. He comes!
posted by Splunge at 8:51 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

I once had an interview where the hiring manager got all up in my shit about how I pronounced SQL. Good thing that interview had no sequel (or too much, as was the case).
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:51 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

15) MySQL

This pales in comparison to the problem of "PostgreSQL". We just call it "post-gres" but I still cringe internally every time.
posted by DU at 8:52 AM on October 29, 2010

I've always pronounced WYSIWYG as "wissy-wig," but apparently that wasn't even an option. Really? Because the S is for "see," so why would you pronounce it as a Z?

Also, Mister Mxyzptlk's name was pronounced "MIX-ul-plik" on the Superfriends show I watched as a kid, if I recall correctly, and his cursed backwards name was "KLIP-ul-skim." Poor little guy, always falling for the "Here, read this note out loud, Mxyzptlk!" trick at the end of the episode.

I found some of the other entries a little off, like the use of "ough" to represent a long o (ICO, Mako). I kind of wish they'd used normal pronunciation guides instead of made-up questionable soundalikes.
posted by Gator at 8:55 AM on October 29, 2010

Credit where credit's due: That is, indeed, a very geeky list of terms.
posted by maryr at 8:55 AM on October 29, 2010

Oh, and the term I apparently pronounce incorrectly - LaTeX. I was taught to pronounce it la-tech, but everyone else seems to just say latex.
posted by maryr at 8:57 AM on October 29, 2010

On second thought, let's not go to the Internet. It is a silly place.
posted by fight or flight at 8:58 AM on October 29, 2010 [7 favorites]

the use of "ough" to represent a long o

The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough.
posted by DU at 9:05 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

We're supposed to pronounce WYSIWYG? I've been doing it wrong. YMMV.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:06 AM on October 29, 2010

WYSIWYG as "wissy-wig,"

Mister Mxyzptlk's name was pronounced "MIX-ul-plik"

Those were my two issues with the list as well. Wondertwin powers activate!

Now can someone help me with China Mieville? MEE-vill? MY-ville? CHIN-uh?
posted by Rock Steady at 9:08 AM on October 29, 2010

"Mee-Fight"

What happened to the guy who was doing a study about just this? There was an online survey and all, but I lost track of it.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:08 AM on October 29, 2010

boo. Linux is pronounced lee-nooks, and nobody can convince me otherwise! I also sometimes pronounce it like "Linus" from Peanuts. Pronouncing it with a soft "i" is the sole reason that it's not the most popular operating system in the world, so you mushy-pronunciation adherents only have yourselves to blame! :P

Also, as someone whose last name ends in "ough", I will point out that there are seven different ways to pronouce "ough" (bough,bought,cough,through,borough,rough,though), so saying ICO is pronounced "eee-kough" isn't very helpful.

OK, there's your daily dose of pedantry. You may not resume your day.
posted by luvcraft at 9:09 AM on October 29, 2010

...on the other hand, they do get points for mentioning that "my sequel" is acceptable.
posted by luvcraft at 9:11 AM on October 29, 2010

I'm not impressed by "Ubisoft" as you-bee-soft. I always thought it was a Latin pun: "ubi" means where (-> ware).
posted by demiurge at 9:19 AM on October 29, 2010

Now can someone help me with China Mieville? MEE-vill? MY-ville? CHIN-uh?

China as in the country, me'eh-VILL
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:22 AM on October 29, 2010

"Take it up with Nelson Mandela" by new answer to everything.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 9:25 AM on October 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

Aubrey bothered me a lot. If you have ever had that guy in the dorms, the one who hangs around, never can tell that you are trying to study or talk to someone else, you know what I'm talking about. It wouldn't be so bad if he were just a hanger-on, but he also had a kind of snotty righteousness that added to his antiallure. Little "corrections" about anything, but most especially if you liked that thing. His one-upmanship was annoying when it failed and irritating when he got close to the mark.

Yet another Saturday night winding down and everyone filing out, but for Aubrey, who never knew when to take his leave. One of my Lovecraft collections was laying out and he brought up how silly it, and Lovecraft, were. I defended Lovecraft with my first edition Deities and Demigods, that this sort of cosmic insignificance had some staying power in people's minds. "Goofy 'unpronounceable' names that wouldn't even be scary if you could say them" was his dismissal.

I thought that they were fairly good names, not just random mashings of consonants and too-few vowels. "Go on, scare me."

I gave it a shot. "C'thulhu" received a snort.

Again, lower, and grinding, "KUH-tooo-lhOOOO," raising and curling my tongue to make it all lower. Aubrey's faux English accent mocked me. "You'll have to do better than that, old son."

I switched from my "There Is No Dana Only Zuuuulll" voice to something just as low, but with more cramping wet tonsil, nasal sound, and a high, buzzing overtone that often hurt my vocal cords if I did it too long, but started off with a cough. "kuh-TOUuuUuuUuulhUuuUuu."

"Alright, the judges will take that." At last, some recognition.

I had other plans, though. "Darn tootin'. Now you do the other one."

"Which other one?"

I flipped a page, then pointed down it, "Your most scary voice, as if you don't have a precisely human vocal apparatus, but something else. You practice while I go get a soda. I want it perfect by the time I get back." "Which name?"

I dawdled, but not too long. My door was still propped open when I returned, but no Aubrey. I recall my last words to him: "That one. Starts with an H."

Maybe he had the stuff after all.
posted by adipocere at 9:29 AM on October 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

"My squirrel".

I keep trying, but it has yet to catch on.
posted by a young man in spats at 9:30 AM on October 29, 2010 [3 favorites]

It wouldn't be so bad if he were just a hanger-on, but he also had a kind of snotty righteousness that added to his antiallure. Little "corrections" about anything, but most especially if you liked that thing. His one-upmanship was annoying when it failed and irritating when he got close to the mark.

Aubrey sounds a lot like some MeFites. I won't name any names, of course.
posted by morganannie at 9:39 AM on October 29, 2010

Come on, fhqwhgads.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:40 AM on October 29, 2010 [9 favorites]

What, no "pwned"?
posted by jetsetsc at 9:42 AM on October 29, 2010

The article lost geek points by not including IPA transcriptions.
posted by Memo at 9:50 AM on October 29, 2010 [5 favorites]

What, no "pwned"?

Does anyone not pronounce it like "owned" with a P in front?

I was glad I was pronouncing most of these correctly, but I still want to say "mem-may" instead of "meem," which still makes me cringe even though I know it is right.
posted by mreleganza at 10:08 AM on October 29, 2010

I've always pronounced Cthulhu as k-TOO-loo in a guttural way. Sort of a Klingon kind of thing.

When I'm feeling supergeeky (so, most of the time) I chirp and squelch out "Cthulhu" as a fluid, high-to-low, slippery sound, trying to imagine the unimaginable sound I might make if I were a being from beyond, a being without tongue or teeth, without a mouth as we understand it, a being which has never heard English or any earthly tongue and does not care what puny sounds we make with our inconsequential, measly faces.

In practice, it sounds more like a bird than a mighty being.

I will go geek elsewhere now.

If you come over here, I will make us cocoa and we can spit and growl and chirp "Cthulhu" at each other from across the room.
posted by Elsa at 10:12 AM on October 29, 2010

I just came in here to promote "my squirrel" as another acceptable way to pronounce "MySQL". That is all.
posted by aaronbeekay at 10:24 AM on October 29, 2010

morganannie: "Whatever happened with that pronunciation survey?"

ChurchHatesTucker: ""Mee-Fight"

What happened to the guy who was doing a study about just this? There was an online survey and all, but I lost track of it"

Oh hai! That's me. So this project (and survey, er, I mean, Ginormous dataset) got kind of big. As in, I sold everything I owned, moved to England, and started a PhD programme in linguistics big. MetaFilter is fantastic, as you all know, but turns out it also provides a really amazing testing ground for updating some current sociolinguistic and sociophonetic models and theories to account for what goes on in this newfangled thing called "computer-mediated communication" - and other awesome language phenomenon that happen here and not here (like, over there...*waves* to Reddit and CouchSurfing and Twitter).

In other words, I PROMISE you all that shiny charts are coming soon, but not until I do some crazy logical regressions and statistical analysis using R Project and whatnot. Right now, I don't even know what those words mean. (Well, I do, but I need to all this right. MeFites deserve no less than the full beanplate treatment and the most meta analysis in the whole wide world and/or web).

"Use of scare quotes...ooh, scary!"
posted by iamkimiam at 10:33 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

And here I was just about to ask who on God's green earth pronounces meme "May-may".
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:57 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've always pronounced WYSIWYG as "wissy-wig," but apparently that wasn't even an option. Really? Because the S is for "see," so why would you pronounce it as a Z?

Because the S is between two voiced sounds (the "ih" of the Y and the "ee" of the I) in the word, and its pronunciation gets pulled away from the voiceless "ss" to the voiced "zz" by the surrounding sounds.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:08 AM on October 29, 2010

I never know how anything is pronounced - I started learning science from textbooks at the age of 5 (I was a very early reader) and while I was quickly disabused of "SKEE-in-tist" and "ba-SEE-tra" for scientist and bacteria, those words being of common knowledge here in rural Indiana, it was much longer before anyone noticed my odd pronunciation of "POH-lar-is" for the North Star and "ORE-ee-on" for the constellation my son is now named after (and that I pronounce more conventionally nowadays). There were plenty of other ones, many not corrected until college, actually.

There are words that, frankly, have no "correct" pronunciation. Actually, the very notion of "correct" is wrong when it comes to language - you can describe usage, but if you try to "correct" it you're going to die old, bitter, and an annoyance to everyone around you. ("Metafilter: old, b..." - oh, I see you've seen that joke.)

I'm eagerly awaiting iamkimiam's graphic shininess.
posted by Michael Roberts at 11:14 AM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

What? Nothing about "gif"?

It's a G people...not peanut butter.
posted by toekneebullard at 11:24 AM on October 29, 2010

magus ... “may-jus”

No.

> There are words that, frankly, have no "correct" pronunciation. Actually, the very notion of "correct" is wrong when it comes to language - you can describe usage, but if you try to "correct" it you're going to die old, bitter, and an annoyance to everyone around you.

My man!
posted by languagehat at 11:28 AM on October 29, 2010

maryr: I pronounce LaTeX as "lay-tech". For some reason the short-a pronunciation grates on my ears, but I find it acceptable. Pronouncing it like the stuff they make condoms out of shows that you've never talked to anybody who knows what they're doing;it's kind of a shibboleth.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:33 AM on October 29, 2010

Oh, and the term I apparently pronounce incorrectly - LaTeX. I was taught to pronounce it la-tech, but everyone else seems to just say latex.

In fact, lah-tech is correct. The X is actually a chi, and thus is to be pronounced as such.
posted by TypographicalError at 11:45 AM on October 29, 2010

Instead of "How do you say these geeky terms", perhaps a better title would be "Have you even heard of half of these geeky terms."
posted by JackFlash at 12:00 PM on October 29, 2010

aaronbeekay sez:
I just came in here to promote "my squirrel" as another acceptable way to pronounce "MySQL". That is all.

I've always said MySQL as "my squeal."

I like "Squirrel," though; it would probably get me fewer raised eyebrows in meetings.
posted by doorsnake at 12:02 PM on October 29, 2010

Also, no "warez"? I was shocked and appalled to learn that there are people who pronounce it the same way as "Juarez" (like the city in Mexico) instead of "wares" (as in "hawking your wares").
posted by mhum at 12:28 PM on October 29, 2010

AT-AT is four letters, each named, and the idiots who invented Jarjar are not enough authority to change that.

Also: call it GameFax all you like, it sounds preposterous and no one knows what the fuck "a fak" is.

In fact: people should stop being stupid-heads and trying to just pronounce a series of unrelated letters: they are all in caps because they aren't a word, so don't pronounce them like one.
posted by paisley henosis at 12:53 PM on October 29, 2010

I was always under the impression that ICO, being a Japanese game essentially about quickly running with a companion away from a castle, was named for the Japanese phrase iko-o (rhymes with eco, as in ecosystem) meaning "let's go", and that the letter C was just their choice of Romanization...
posted by kaseijin at 1:00 PM on October 29, 2010

I thought this was going to be about

<> ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * <> ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

pronunciation guide
posted by handee at 1:03 PM on October 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it's definitely wizzy-wig (and WSDL is wizzdul.)

And if I ever meet Mr. Mandela, you can be damn sure I'm taking it up with him. It's *obviously* ooh-BUN-too.
posted by callmejay at 1:08 PM on October 29, 2010

If AT-AT is "at at", how do you say AT-ST? Atst? Nonsense.
posted by mike_bling at 1:10 PM on October 29, 2010

I'm sticking with wissy-wig. My people have been pronouncing it that way since the War of Northern Aggression, consarnit.
posted by Gator at 1:18 PM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've been pronouncing it Man-a so long that I don't think I could say maw-na.

Interesting phenomenon though, that because when these words are first encountered by people they're seen and not heard, and so these variations exist.
posted by NoraCharles at 2:05 PM on October 29, 2010

Lay-tech sounds like someone who's a technical squire, as in "lay-man".
posted by mmrtnt at 2:38 PM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

I recall in the mid-90s being introduced to SQL (the definitely-not-open-source database) by an IT geek who spelled it out and I asked him "can I call it 'squeel' for short?" He LOLed*. He also had this Dilbert comic about the pronunciation of GUI in his cubicle. (If "GUI" is "gooey", then why ISN'T SQL "squeel"???)

Also, I soft-s the WYSIWYG. Either way it sounds like a character in a Dickens novel.

*and there's another one... do I have to spell it out L.O.L. or can I just say "loll" or "lole"??

Also, if "Frequently Asked Questions" is a "fack", then "Frequently Unanswered Questions" are...
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:40 PM on October 29, 2010

"POH-lar-is"
"ORE-ee-on"

...Excuse me, I have to beat myself into unconsciousness with a dictionary now.
posted by KChasm at 2:42 PM on October 29, 2010

iamkimiam: "In other words, I PROMISE you all that shiny charts are coming soon, but not until I do some crazy logical regressions and statistical analysis using R Project and whatnot. "

Like my fellow metfites, I look forward to telling you what you did wrong.
posted by chairface at 3:37 PM on October 29, 2010

I am only promising shiny.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:47 PM on October 29, 2010

I pronounce LaTeX as "lay-tech". [...] Pronouncing it like the stuff they make condoms out of shows that you've never talked to anybody who knows what they're doing

Don't be silly. They're contraceptives.
posted by ersatz at 5:36 PM on October 29, 2010

Any time the sequence "kough as in goat" appears in your easy pronunciation guide, you need more IPA.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 5:41 PM on October 29, 2010

Also, The Mystery: May-may; Meem; Mee-mee ?

/mɛm/, like the way "memm" would be pronounced, never occurred to anybody? When I first heard of that word I thought it came from French and had something to do with everybody doing the same thing - la même chose. I still think that makes sense actually!
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 5:43 PM on October 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Meme" is analogous to gene, I had always figured it was intended to rhyme and I had no idea people said it any other way.
posted by arcticwoman at 7:29 PM on October 29, 2010

It's a G people...not peanut butter.

Obviously, I'm older than dirt, and it's not like I can provide an URL at this point, but I will still swear that I remember when Compuserve first posted the technical info on the format, they not -only- said that it was a soft G, but specifically said "like the peanut butter."

Of course, that's not the way it ended up popularly, and we're now here on the outer edge of who cares, with PNG alpha transparency (and even shims to make it work in IE6), but it was supposed to be "Jif" all along.
posted by nonliteral at 9:45 PM on October 29, 2010

I was under the impression that GIF was for Graphical Interchange Format. Why would it be a soft g?
posted by shakespeherian at 9:52 PM on October 29, 2010

I don't see GIGO - garbage in, garbage out - anywhere in there.
posted by goofyfoot at 9:52 PM on October 29, 2010

I remember when the gif89 format first came out (awesome at the time), there was an animated gif from the developer of the format that explicitly said it was pronounced "jif".

All you could ever want to know here about that topic is here: How to pronounce GIF.
posted by o0o0o at 10:35 PM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

correctly, of course.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:37 PM on October 29, 2010

.... Yeah, they're totally wrong about Mxyzptlk. It's "mix-yez-pitel-ick." That's what it always said in the "Editor's Notes," and I trust Julius Schwartz on this.
posted by webmutant at 2:22 AM on October 30, 2010

Excu-see-fer
posted by mr.marx at 7:12 AM on October 30, 2010

mreleganza: "Does anyone not pronounce it like "owned" with a P in front?"

This was originally called Pwnage, until they figured people wouldn't buy tickets for something they couldn't pronounce.
posted by the latin mouse at 7:54 AM on October 30, 2010

All you could ever want to know here about that topic is here: How to pronounce GIF.

Bookmarked. Thank you!
posted by nonliteral at 10:32 AM on October 30, 2010

Oh, and I wanted to clarify -- I am, of course, talking about the Silver Age, Earth-One version of Mxyzptlk here, not his Earth-Two counterpart, Mxyztplk (note the different spelling), whose name, as I'm sure everyone already knows, was pronounced "mix-yez-tipel-ick." I mean, that's so obvious I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to point it out.
posted by webmutant at 11:01 AM on October 30, 2010

Bah. What geek pronunciation guide is complete without a discussion of the many various and wonderful ways to mispronounce "ixitxachitl"?
posted by jammer at 5:07 PM on October 30, 2010

I was under the impression that GIF was for Graphical Interchange Format. Why would it be a soft g?

That's how its inventor says it should be pronounced. But I've never met anyone who thought that the soft-g pronunciation was right, even among people who knew and acknowledged Compuserve's opinion on the matter.

Similarly, the giga- prefix (gigabytes, etc.) is supposedly most-correctly pronounced with a soft g, as in "gigantic", or as in Back to the Future. I think the soft-g giga- is more common than the soft-g GIF, but still not the majority pronunciation. (And anyway a truly pedantic computer geek would be saying gibi-. Unless referring to porn, which is measured in jigglebytes.)

Any language people out there know if the hardening of an initial g is a regular thing in English? I can't think of any other examples.
posted by hattifattener at 9:52 PM on October 30, 2010

Any language people out there know if the hardening of an initial g is a regular thing in English? I can't think of any other examples.

Do you mean when followed by an i? Because if the next vowel is a, o, or u, then I'm sure you can think of tons of examples.

For G-I, off the top of my head, "gibbon."
posted by mreleganza at 10:46 PM on October 30, 2010

For the last one, I couldn't get over pronouncing it as the online store does, Mxyplyzyk. (In THAT case it's Mix-ee-plizz-ick with the plizz rhyming with fizz.)
posted by IndigoRain at 1:36 AM on October 31, 2010

Any language people out there know if the hardening of an initial g is a regular thing in English? I can't think of any other examples.

How about:

• gift
• give
• gimlet
• gill
• gilded

posted by mhum at 9:26 AM on November 1, 2010

Get out of town! Good Gods, what does it take for some Geldings to Get it? Geld? Graft? Gosslings?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:42 PM on November 1, 2010

Er, yes, mreleganza and mhum, those are all words with hard initial gs, very good, but are they words whose initial gs hardened? That is, were they originally pronounced with a soft g?
posted by hattifattener at 9:51 PM on November 1, 2010