• witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    What did the creator of the GIF name them? Imagine if a bunch of people read your name wrong, then when you told them how it’s pronounced said that they don’t care, and your mom was wrong to pronounce your name that way.

    • Voyajer@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s what happened to aluminium. Sir Humphrey Davey came up with aluminum in 1812 but his peers decided it wasn’t classical sounding enough.

      • IgneoTalus@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        I refuse to call it anything but Aluminum just for that. I find it insulting to Sir Humphrey Davey that his naming rights were basically stolen by someone completely unrelated.

    • Risk@feddit.uk
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      10 months ago

      Eh, I prefer the descriptivist method of language. It’s how language evolves over time.

      Comparing it to a personal name is a false equivalence. GIF is an acronym, people could enunciate each letter if they so preferred and it would be more accurate/true to creation than even the creator’s opinion of how to pronounce it.

      • w2tpmf@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        It’s not a false equivalence. He named it after the penun butter brand. It was specifically named to be pronounced a certain way.

        • Risk@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          Oh, okay. That only combats my point about it being a false equivalence. At the end of the day, it’s an acronym.

      • witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I see what you’re saying, and to a point I agree. I see it as people reading it a certain way in their head and becoming attached to how they think it should sound. This happens often because English words especially can have all manner of exceptions to the usual rules of spelling and grammar. There is nothing embarrassing about reading, or at least there shouldn’t be. What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.

          Man, you must be embarrassed all the time when you hear British or American people talk.

          Somehow the world can survive and we can understand one another with very different pronunciations of words like “Aluminum”, but this… THIS WILL NOT STAND!

        • Risk@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          I mean, it’s only embarrassing for them - if they want to be loud, proud, and wrong that’s okay.

          But at the same time, they may well set the trend for how it’s pronounced in the future.

          Lord knows, waDer (i.e. water) started somewhere…

          Edit: I’m guessing I offended someone by implying that saying ‘wadder’ is the wrong way to say water, hahaha.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      What did the creator of the GIF name them?

      Island was originally spelt without an ‘s’. It was later added as a stylistic choice and is now the “correct” spelling. Language doesn’t give a fuck about original intent. If you want to be originalist about it then you need to hie back to corky English

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      How a computer scientist thinks words should be pronounced is not as convincing an argument as so many here seem to think.

      • ANON@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Wow really. This changes everything . We have to rethink civilisation . All thanks to OP here blessing us with his infinite wisdom.