Last night I brought my nephews to look for some things in PC Fair, Palm Square Centre Point KK. One of the things that caught my attention was the USB Internet phone sold by one of the booth and the sales lady mentioned it as a “sky-pee phone”.
Luckily the name ’skype’ was written there as I don’t know why a phone has anything to do with pee from the sky. When I was in my teens, the term sky-juice was widely used when ordering for cold water (not sure if it’s still being used now), so you can understand my slight and temporary misinterpretation.
She’s not the only person who refers it as sky-pee, I’ve heard my colleagues used that pronounciation too.
Anyway, the correct way of pronouncing “skype” is the same way as you pronounce gripe, ripe or type. It’s published on Skype’s website here. So now that you know that’s the correct way to say it, you can correct your friends and appear intelligent than you look.
Another name which often confuses people is Adobe. Is it “adobe” (as in abode) or “ado-BEE”. For this one, it’s the opposite of Skype, where it’s pronounced as a-do-BEE. Someone submitted a ticket on Adobe’s support and received his answer in the email.
Okay so while we’re on this subject, another most commonly mis-pronounced name is Linux. I’ve been guilty of this myself as I’ve been saying it as “Lie-nux” instead of the correct way, which is “Lee-nux”. Another way people refer to it is “Lee-nix” or “Lie-nix” following the pronounciation from the Unix system.
Because the term originated from the founder’s name, Linus Torvalds, people like me just change the “s” on his name to “x” when pronouncing linux while not realising that in Finnish, Linus is pronounced as Lee-nus. You can download the mp3 file of Linus himself saying it. It’s located here.
Any other correct pronounciation term you think I should know about? Let me know :)
Links :
Skype Help : How do you pronounce the word Skype?
Proper Pronunciation of Adobe
Howto pronouce Linux?
6 Responses
havuk
December 11th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Comment #1
GNU pronounced ge-nu, with a hard G. (Stallman said it)
So that makes Gnome pronounced Ge-nome, also hard G. But I think it’s ok to say Nome.
SUSE is German so we say soo-se, e is not silent. Debian is actually 2 names joined together, Debra + Ian. So it’s easy to know how it sound.
JPEG is ‘jay-peg’. GIF is ‘jif’ but I prefer ‘gif’. DIVX is ‘div-ex’ and XVID is ‘ex-vid’. SCSI is ’scussy’.
So many more, but I actually don’t really care how it sound :p
Adam
December 11th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Comment #2
Heard a lot of people pronouncing it as Sky Pee but never bothered to correct them unless they were my close friends. Some people can’t take constructive criticisms.
Ed
December 11th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Comment #3
still remember sndconfig in red hat (dunno cent or newer version still do this) will test by playing the “Hi, this is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Linux”
clement
December 11th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Comment #4
any more cool stuff from pc fair? yesterday KK was packed, I was stuck near the soon to be suria sabah for quite sometime, till i made u U-turn to get something to eat in Gaya St,
retard
December 12th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Comment #5
the ones i come across:
oracle - mispronounced as o RA cle
yves saint laurent - mispronounced as yee ves…
ralph lauren - mispronounced as ralph law-wren
setup - mispronounced as sedoop
configure - mispronounced as confi-jer
hyundai - mispronounced as hine-die
kota kinabalu - mispronounced as koota kiniblue
tawau - mispronounced as t’wow
ok. the last 2 were mispronounced by foreigners so that shouldn’t count. give them the benefit.
i avoid correcting anyone when they mispronounce. as long as i understand them, it’s good enough for me. i think i am getting too hypercritical already. so i better stop here.
Rem
December 12th, 2006 at 5:43 am
Comment #6
Velvet (the popstar wannabe) promoted ‘Penampang’ in front of the entire nation as ‘Per-nam-pang’ (as in ‘penampar’). I don’t know where she learned that from. It should be ‘Pi-nam-pang’ (as in ‘pinang’). It’s forgivable when a non-Sabahan pronounces it wrongly (which happens more often than not) — but a Sabahan?
And oh yes… especially an iconic place like Penampang! Lainlah kalau salah sebut Kirokot atau Komborongoh atau Tebobon, etc. Hmmm…
Tenom is also, most of the time, wrongly pronounced as ‘Ter-nom’ (as in ‘terkam’). It should be ‘Tay-nom’ (as in ‘teh’). Yet another iconic place in Sabah — and any Sabahan above the age of 15 should be shot if he/she gets it wrong. :)
And I bet most Malaysians too, couldn’t pronounce Bedong (a place in Kedah) and Bentong (Pahang) correctly. If you’re a Sabahan, then it’s forgivable…. :)
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