Re: a question of pronunciation

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

bratsche@dfw.net writes:

> Supposedly it's Guh-NohME, but I refuse to pronounce it that way. GNU is
> pronounced Guh-NEW, and it's not a new thing. It's always been that way.
> I've never quite understood why GNOME (or anything else) should have a
> mangled pronunciation (which is more difficult to pronounce than the
> correct pronunciation of the word) just to pay tribute to another word,
> and especially when the word given tribute is part of the acronym. I'll
> continue to pronounce GNOME as NohME (iow, the original and correct
> pronunciation of the word =) so long as the project exists, and I'll
> continue to pronounce GNU as Guh-NEW (iow, the original and correct
> pronunciation of the word =), and I'll not make a freak hybrid word that's
> spelled correctly but pronouned incorrectly.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I catch the distinction here:

 Gnu - spelled with a 'gn' to represent some sounds in African
       languages not found in English. Traditionally pronounced
       'nu' in Enlish, more recently often pronounced with a hard
       'g' sound because it sounds cool. (*)

 Gnome - spelled with a 'gn' because it was pronounced that way
         in English in the distant past. Typically pronounced 
         'nome' in modern Enlish... as part of the GNOME project,
         pronounced with a hard 'g' because it sounds cool...

Actually, the locals down south here seem to say 'gee-nome'
most of the time...

Regards,
                                        Owen

(*) the switch probably can trace its roots to a well known
    Flanders and Swan song