Re: How to pronounce Gnome

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2000 at 02:07:37PM -0500, Jonathan wrote:
> As this is not a linguistics board, I'll make my comment and then let this
> thread die. As a vocal music major in college I was exposed to a multitude of
> languages and after all was said and done, I concluded that English was my
> very favorite (European) language. It's got twice the vocabulary of any other
> which means English can achieve a level of subtlety unattainable in the other
> languages (ie French Mother-in-law, and step-mother are the same). As for
> phonetics, English may not be perfect, but again int beats french, which
> leaves silent half the letters in any given word. English is basically German
> with the french vocabulary, with a multitude of other smaller influences.

If it's the level of subtelty to enjoy in languages, you'd enjoy czech.  We
have a huge vocabulary AND, by ordering the words differently in a sentece
you achieve a slightly different meaning.  Also with the cases, and the fact
all words of the sentence change according to the subject (I'm not sure of
all the terminology), you can change the ending on some words to achieve an
even different meaning.  Or by adding a prefix thingie.  A favourite
sarcastic remark in my family is when someone buys a present for someone else
only to use it himself.  you can say instead of "Koupil mi XXX" (He bought me
XXX") "Koupil si mi XXX" (He bought (me|himself) XXX, this sentence is
untranslatable)

Anyway ... the pronounciation in czech of GNOME is guh-nom-eh.  Although even
czech people don't pronounce the 'e' on GNOME, instead you replace it with
the proper ending.  So if I work on GNOME, "Pracuji na GNOMu"

OK, this is an absolutely useless post.  But I sort of felt like writing it.

George