Except it doesn’t in Finnish, where Linus Torvald is from. Linus and Linux is pronounced the same except for the final consonant.
The "i" in Linux and Linus have different pronunciations even when they shouldn't.
Submitted 6 months ago by josefo@leminal.space to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
Epzillon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 6 months ago
So his name is really Lin-us and not Line-us?
Heavybell@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I believe I saw a youtube clip of him saying his name and Linux that way, yes.
neidu@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Yes. I’m Norwegian but I used to know an irate IT finn named Linus. A separate irate IT finn named Linus, that is.
Sharpiemarker@feddit.de 6 months ago
I think it would be Line-us and Line-ux.
Scrollone@feddit.it 6 months ago
I’m Italian and I pronounce both "i"s in the same way. Why is English so strange?
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In this particular instance, the Great Vowel Shift is to blame. What caused that is up for debate.
Tnaeriv@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Correction: Even though he’s Finnish, his primary language is Swedish
zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 6 months ago
“Hello, this is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce ‘Linux’ as ‘Linux’.”
So yeah, he pronounces ‘Linus’ like ‘LEE-noose’, and ‘Linux’ like ‘LEE-nooks’. (Roughly, anyway. It should get the point across for most English speakers, I’m not at a computer to do a more-correct IPA transcription right now.)
z00s@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The real debate is whether it’s sudo or sudo.
I know it means “super user do” so should be pronounced “sue doo”, but it just grates on my ear. To me it will always be “Sue dough”
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 months ago
akshully
It’s “substitute user do”, and defaults to root
IIRC
intrapt@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
So it should be pronounced “suh doo”?
I’ll have fun annoying people with this pronunciation, thanks!
z00s@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you need to start with ackshully, then you don’t need to comment
echodot@feddit.uk 6 months ago
It’s really confusing because “pseudo” pronounce the same way, means not real. So it’s like you only kind of have admin access but really there’s a lot of systems you can’t change. Except that’s not the case, and you have full access.
Heavybell@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah but you’re not really root, you just have permission to run things as root ;)
That’s my flimsy justification for pronouncing it like pseudo, anyway.
josefo@leminal.space 6 months ago
Ah, yeah, that fucked me up too few months ago, there are several videos on the subject. I think it’s a problem with words that are created as written first, and then got pronounced, in second place, like most tech lingo. As a non-native speaker those are always the hardest to speak correctly, and even english has no real consensus.
TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Like SQL. It took me a bit time to learn that the one from MS is Sequel and the other ones are Es Queue El.
echodot@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Yeah, and the ongoing debate of how to pronounce Godot - even the developers don’t seem to know
Sinthesis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I have no source to back this up so maybe I came up with this in my own reality, but I thought it was related to, pseudo = pretended.
Chainweasel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve heard a lot of people pronounce it “Line-ux” lately. I hope it doesn’t blow up into another Gif vs Jif debate.
Draghetta@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There is nothing to debate, Linux is just Linus with an x at the end and should be pronounced as such.
Though sometimes I wish Linus had claimed it was pronounced laynaxe just to fuck with people. Too bad we already know: m.youtube.com/watch?v=c39QPDTDdXU&pp=ygUpbXkg…
DharmaCurious@startrek.website 6 months ago
Y’know the gnome/Guh-nome debate? I intentionally pronounce it Zhnome to fuck with people.
nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
it’s jif. every argument for gif is wrong, and it sounds awkward af, like you got swiped by candlejack mid-wor
Zellith@kbin.social 6 months ago
People know what a GIF is. So I use GIF. It's worked out fine so far.
7fb2adfb45bafcc01c80@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I started back with kernel 0.12 and called it Line-ucks. I still do and people look at me funny, but it’s an old habit and I’m an old dog.
When Linux released his audio file it was already etched into my brain the other way. I do remember being joking that I’m glad his name wasn’t Pinus (like the genus for pine trees) after hearing him say it.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It used to be Line-UI until programming jargon became woke and wanted “experiences” over “interfaces”
Gigan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
English doesn’t make sense because it’s been influenced by so many other languages. I’m not sure of the etymology of Linux and Linus, but I would guess that they have different roots.
rtxn@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
English is such as mess that you actually have spelling contests to prove it. Try that with most other languages, and it’s going to be exciting for all the first graders who just learned the alphabet. Anyone older than that will be bored to death in the contest.
Gigan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I thought of that meme when making my original comment lol
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I thought Linux was named after Linus Torvalds, its creator.
Gigan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If that’s the case, maybe he’s addressed why they are pronounced differently.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
They do have different roots.
One is % sudo su –
And the other is Canadian directly. Ask his parents their nationality to find better roots.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Canadian? Are you thinking of another Linus?
kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
“English is not a language, it’s three languages wearing a trench coat pretending to be one.”
For more fun, right about the time the printing press came into widespread use and English spelling became standardized, the language was in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift.
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“Linus” comes from Greek and means “flax.” Originally pronounced something like “lee-noose.” “Linux” is a combination of Linus’ name and “Unix.”
ThankYouVeryMuch@kbin.social 6 months ago
That's_ not the cause though, most if not all languages have been influenced by many others. And pronunciation, meaning of words etc drift over time in all of them as well.
Most countries have gone through the process of revising their orthography, changing spelling or even adopting different alphabets to have kind of consistent writing systems for their languages.
None of this has been done in the English language, it uses the most basic Latin alphabet which was made for a very different language (when even many Romance languages directly descending from Latin have adapted it with new letters or diacritics), for example English has a lot of vowel sounds that Latin hadn't and it even went through something called 'the great vowel shift' when changes in some vowel sounds got them closer to others that were 'pushed', these pushed others causing a sort of shuffling in the (finite) vowel space, but spelling didn't reflect most of this.
In fact I think that in some cases the spelling took the more ancient version that matched the pronunciation even less like 'plumb' (don't quote me on this, its from the top of my head)
brettvitaz@programming.dev 6 months ago
I’ve always pronounced it Linux. Who pronounces is other way?
Cosmicomical@kbin.social 6 months ago
No, it's pronounced Linux
josefo@leminal.space 6 months ago
The first time I heard it it was pronounced Linux
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 months ago
You’re both wrong, it’s pronounced Linux
helmet91@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve always pronounced it as “Linux”. And then, one day I heard it from a native English speaker pronouncing it as “Linix”, and I still keep hearing that everywhere, but I just cannot fix my brain anymore. To me it always remains “Linux”.
khaffner@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In english maybe
intensely_human@lemm.ee 6 months ago
in spanish quizás
josefo@leminal.space 6 months ago
En español es bastante consistente de hecho, y gracias a un comentario en este post me enteré de que estamos más cerca de la pronunciación original que el inglés, muy interesante.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
You don’t pronounce it “line-ux?”
misophist@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No, I pronounce them Lee-nooks and Lee-noose.
nomecks@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Lie nucks
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Over on the far right we use Truth Chucks. None of that Antarctic communist bs.
Agent641@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Bro… do people unironically say it the other way?
CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“Line-oh” like its French
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well he named it, didn’t he? It’s his own pronunciations.
Aatube@kbin.social 6 months ago
Actually, he didn't even name it.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
Dammit he’s a Finnish nerd, not a linguist.
spudwart@spudwart.com 6 months ago
Quick recap.
So, Linux is Linux because a set of events that lead to it being named after Linus.
It wasn’t uncommon at this time for Unix systems to be named after their relevant creator or platform like this. HP-UX, PC-UX A/UX etc.
Linux would probably be seen as LIN-UX or LIN/UX, it may not seeing as Linux is not Unix, but that’s just speculation.
Linux in its proper reading would be Linus Unix, but that doesn’t make any sense Linux is Unix-like, but it was made in a vacuum without access to Unix source or even Unix systems at all near the beginning.
Wootz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Interesting! Do you happen to know where the -UX suffix convention came from?
Aatube@kbin.social 6 months ago
UniX, apparently
b0gl@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
It’s the same in Swedish so I never realized it’s pronounced differently
sirico@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Thats a real Tough trough though is really gets wound around the wound
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
tdawg@lemmy.world 6 months ago
jasondj@ttrpg.network 6 months ago
Back in like the mid/late-90s, there was a horribly compressed .wav going around the internet of what was supposedly a heavily accented Linus Torvalds saying “Helo my name is Linus Torcalds and I pronounce “Linux” as “Linux”, that’s “Linux”.
I know, because I’ve listened to that .wav a million times. And I still think he said “LEE^^uh -nux”.
rtxn@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, ackshually…
josefo@leminal.space 6 months ago
That was very enlightening, the Spanish pronunciation is actually more close to that than the English one, so I feel very validated as an Spanish speaker. Thank you. Also didn’t knew that he wasn’t from an English speaking country.