Bug#509933: Pronunciation of initialisms
Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:
> Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> writes:
>> On Thu, 08 Jul 2010, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>> + A shared library must be uniquely identified by an <tt>SONAME</tt>
>> s/an/a/ ? (I saw it several times, sounds odd to me but maybe I miss
>> something)
> Like Russ, it sounds fine to me. That's probably because we pronounce
> the initialism “SONAME” as “ess oh name”, which starts with a vowel
> sound and hence takes the indefinite article “an”; while you might be
> treating it as an acronym.
> <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initialism>
Yeah, unfortunately it's a standard problem in English. The article
depends on the pronunciation rather than on the spelling, and for acronyms
and similar constructed words that are pronounced differently, different
people use different articles. You're probably pronouncing it "soname"
whereas I (possibly too familiar with what the S.O. abbreviation is for)
always call it ess oh name.
Like British vs. US spelling, there's no right answer, just consistency.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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