Re: pronunciation of daemon

[brian moore <bem@cmc.net>]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 03:16:42PM -0500, Bart Szyszka wrote:
> > Because his name is Linus, pronounced Leenus. Hence Leenux.
> > If you pronounce his name as Lie-nus (as native English speakers
> > would tend to), then Lie-nucks is reasonable -- but wrong.
> 
> It is pronounced as Leenus in his native country (in many European
> languages, i's have ee sounds almost exclusively). The Peanuts 
> character, Linus, is pronounced 'Line-us', though, so that's probably
> why I say "Line-ux". I'm pretty sure I read something by Linus where
> he mentioned the fact that name pronunciations do get translated
> over in other languages and he was perfectly fine with it. And as has
> been mentioned here before, it was originally Line-ux and only became 
> Lynn-us because of the press.

And people change the pronounciation of their names all the time because
of language.  The Polish 'Kryzs' is usually 'Chris' to people who
emigrate to English-speaking countries (and they sometimes even use both
spellings, one to retain their ethnic identity and the other to not
confuse the natives on how to pronounce it).  People with Asian names
usually just give up and adopt a new name because the pronunciation of
their given name was impossible for non-Asians to reproduce.  (Just as
the stereotypical Asian confuses 'l' and 'r', non-Asians can't hear the
difference in Asian syllables... they no doubt laugh at us for the same
sort of thing.)

Of course, most important is that Linus has said he doesn't care how
people pronounce 'Linux' either.  You can pronounce it 'throat-warbler
mangrove' if you wish (though it will no doubt confuse listeners).

> Personally I don't find this conversation annoying at all as long as
> people don't insist on a pronunciation when even the ones who grew
> up in the same city can't agree on how to say 'bagel'.   : )

I actually vary on 'daemon'.  I use the 'day-mon' pronunciation most of
the time, and 'demon' when I want to annoy people.  (Works wonders!)

-- 
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