Seriously though, unpopular opinion disclaimer, I think I may be only one that didn’t find it funny at all, just an informative, overly long, cringey Tenacious D reinterpretation ?
Is not up to SUSE’s marketing department, most of which is from the US, either. The company has a German origin, had German founders (they’re all out of the company at this point though), and the company name used to be a German acronym. The correct pronunciation is the German one.
(See the update @barbara added. Lisa Sherwell actually took the effort to learn the correct pronunciation. Part of the reason why is that she was actually involved in planning the new German office of SUSE.)
The vacation one is a bad example because some people say vuhkation and some say vaykaytion. From the germans I know the E on the end is like uh, like how they say bitte, danke, etc
I’ll admit that this approach did not occur to me. If it worked for genre television…
🎶 Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes. They’ve got those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses. And what’s with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anywayyyy? 🎶
Edit: To be perfectly clear, I’ve not looked at bunnies the same way since. I suppose we can add that to the list of the many crimes of Joss Whedon, somewhere after “mental and physical abuse of cast and crew” and “killing off Tara and Anya”.
I have a rule about acronyms: if the spelling makes sense to be said as a word, I follow the English grammatical rules. A word that’s spelled s-u-s-e would be pronounced “soos”, so that’s what I say.
This is why I don’t pronounce GNU as “ga-noo”, it doesn’t make sense as a word. In those cases, I just spell them out.
So what’s the deal with GNU? When I first saw it, I was sure the G was silent, or formed a dipthong, like gnat or gnocchi or gnaw or gnarly or gnome or just any word starting with gn in English. But IRL, I’ve only heard it pronounced with a hard G, same with Gnome.
Well thats the thing, generally if I see an acronym and have to ask myself how it would be pronounced as a word, by my rule I just spell it out.
For a great example of this (unrelated to FOSS), look at LGBTQIA+. Even though it’s a mouthful to say each letter individually, no one wrestles it into “Leguhbuht’kwia plus”, it just doesn’t make sense and saying it that way would probably ellicit a dead stare from whoever heard it. Unless it’s painfully simple to morph into a word or single syllable, I don’t bother.
I’m not trying to say this is the right way, mind you. It’s just the way that makes the most sense to me.
Except GNU is a great example of an acronym that is pronounceable. It’s even in the dictionary. The GNU mascot is a gnu, in fact.
LGBTQIA+ is essentially unpronounceable, thus we treat it as an initialism. Not that that’s a requirement, there are examples like VIP where even though we could pronounce it we pronounce each letter individually.
Technically there are initialisms which cannot be pronounced ( letters only ) and acronyms which can be pronounced ( form words ).
So, in general, your rule is a good one. Of course, that does nothing to solve the problem of HOW to pronounce the words when so many different origin cultures are at play. As other have said, SUSE is German. So, is following “English grammatical rules” the right take?
I do not really have an answer. It is not self-evident to me. For Linux, Linus himself seems to have defaulted to US pronunciation. There is some precedent there I suppose.
From the UK I learned it as nome, but the gn is sounded like ng in ing endings rather than n like no. the difference is slight. n As in no is front of tongue on teeth and (g)ng is a back of the throat and nasal NG sound. When I hear people pronounce as two syllables guh-nome it sounds weird.
I don't care. It's Soos. It's Ace-SUS, not Ah-soos. It's I-Key-Ah, not E-Kay-Ah. These are the way everyone around me says these things for as long as I can remember.
And that’s totally fair, in my opinion. Speech has to flow in the language you speak, or you’ll sound like an idiot. As long as people don’t go around claiming to know and teaching others pronunciations for things that they themselves don’t pronounce the way that was intended.
That’s about as accurate as if I was adamant that the USA was not pronounced yoo-ess-ey, but ooh-sha, like everyone around me said it for as long as I can remember.
Non-anglophone countries exist, and there are actually more of them with more people than anglophone countries, and most of these projects come from non-anglophone countries.
Non-Anglophone countries are free to exist and are free to pronounce things however they want. I would be looked at as if I had two heads if I pronounced those things like those non-Anglophone countries. It's about not wanting to be treated like I'm a idiot just for pronouncing things the "proper" way.
A name is not like any other word. It is pronounced the way the entity with the name pronounces it. You can’t tell me how my name is pronounced, for example.
To mispronounce a name because you don’t know how it’s pronounced is fine. But to purposefully mispronounce a name after you know it’s wrong… Well if you’re concerned with “not looking like an idiot” then we’ll just say it’s counterproductive.
IKEA in North America pronounces it I-Key-Ah in their commercials. That's directly from the company itself. If they are OK with accepting the different pronunciation of their own name, then why am I expected to say it the European way? That goes for Suse and Asus as well, since they've been called Soos and Ace-sus for years before they decided to "correct" everyone.
“they’ve been called soos” is not the same as “their name is pronounced soos”. If they state it as an acceptable pronunciation (similar to ikea) then that’s different. They instead released a video telling people how to say it correctly.
They released a joke video, as evident by the singing and the fact the kids still said it "wrong" at the end. I think they are very aware and understand that people will still call them Soos.
I think they are very aware and understand that people will still call them Soos.
And yet it is still an incorrect pronunciation. You can’t dispute that. Just because you will “do what you want to” doesn’t mean it’s right. Own it - you say the word wrong.
I never disputed it. I said I don't care. They can pronounce it however they want. In regular conversation with people around me, I'll call it whatever I want.
You must live with very closed-minded people if people make fun of you just because you pronounce a German company’s name like the German company does. That said, be happy and pronounce stuff as you like, it’s not like it really matters.
I live in a place where people call things whatever they want to call things, and when enough people call that thing by that pronunciation for long enough than it becomes the default pronunciation. Which is exactly the same as where you live.
You pronounce it any way other than the way the person saying it does.
This results in a few possible outcomes.
The person may get an opportunity to go on at length about why their pronunciation is used, and be entertaining.
The person may get all het up about it, insisting that you’re wrong, and you can further mess with them by shrugging and continuing to use whatever you were using.
The person doesn’t care, and y’all have a nice conversation about distros and Linux in general.
The person switches to your pronunciation, and you now have a stalker.
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