Eversee a free software program or GNU/Linux distribution that you have toguess how to pronounce? Ever hear your friends or fellow LUG membersargue over how to properly say "Ubuntu" or "Liferea?" Perhaps evenGNU/Linux itself (guh-NOO LIN-ucks) gives you pronunciation nightmares.Since free software developers communicate primarily through email andWeb sites, you can use one of their programs for years without everknowing how to pronounce it. Here‘s a phonetic guide to nine of themost common unpronounceable free software project and software companynames.
SUSE:Novell‘s GNU/Linux distribution is famous for being easy to use andhard to pronounce. I won‘t go into the myriad ways to butcher this name-- I‘ll just tell you how the company says it: SOO-suh.
Ubuntu:If this were an English word, we‘d probably say oo-BUN-too -- and manydo pronounce it that way, even if it‘s wrong. Marlize Coetzee ofUbuntu‘s parent company, Canonical, says: "Ubuntu, an African word fromZulu and Xhosa, is pronounced ‘oo-BOON-too.‘"
Solaris:Having gone open source via the OpenSolaris project, Solaris hasentered the same realm as GNU/Linux and BSD. But how do you pronounceit? In interviews with Sun employees and Solaris-using sysadmins, I‘veheard at least three distinctive pronunciations. The final word on thematter comes from Sun Microsystems representative Liza Curran, who toldme that the official pronunciation is so-LARE-us.
Debian:If you weren‘t aware of the etymology of the name of this famousmetadistribution, you might think it was some obscure Italian orSpanish word. Debian‘s true origin is far less exotic, however -- it‘sa conglomerate of two names: Deb and Ian. That makes the pronunciationfairly straightforward: DEB-ee-un.
Mandriva:When it was Mandrake, it was easy to pronounce. Then Mandrakesoftmerged with two distributions that had much less intuitive names forEnglish speakers: Conectiva and Lycoris. These mergers plus a lawsuitfrom another French company that claimed to have domain over theMandrake name caused Mandrakesoft to become the far lesstongue-friendly Mandriva. It‘s pronounced thusly: man-DREE-vah(Mandriva also provides an MP3 of the name if you‘d prefer to hear it for yourself).
Azureus:While there has been some debate over how this indispensable Java-basedBitTorrent client should be pronounced, a representative of the Azureusteam made this wiki entry in response to my question. In his reply, he stressed that there is no official pronunciation, but the recommended way to say "Azureus" is: uh-ZOO-ree-us.
Liferea:This popular RSS reader‘s name is a real mouthful when you consider itsorigins: LInux FEed REAder. Project leader Lars Lindner had this to sayabout it: "When I created the name, I tried to find a reasonableabbreviation and also a unique name. When I, as a German, read the word‘Liferea‘ I speak it like ‘lee-fer-rejah‘ (ed. note: in German, j has a soft sound, like y)pronounced on the first syllable. But I assume a lot of the Englishnative speakers use a totally different pronunciation. So there is noreal official pronunciation."
LyX:While this powerful document processor may work with LaTeX, it isn‘tcursed with the same sandpaper-on-the-throat phoneme on the end.Unfortunately, there has been so much heated debate over how LyX shouldbe pronounced that there is officially no standard pronunciation.
Qt:If you‘re anything like me, you‘re probably inclined to pronounceTrollTech‘s dual-licensed graphics toolkit by its letters: queue TEE.After all, don‘t you usually spell out Qt‘s GNU rival, GTK, when youhave to say it aloud? TrollTech disagrees, however -- representativesfrom the company say it is pronounced like the word cute.
Jem Matzan is an experienced electronics technician, freelance technology journalist, and the editor-in-chief of The Jem Report, Hardware in Review and Software in Review.
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