[ILUG] Pronunciation

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Linehan (plinehan at yahoo.com):

> Lyn-ux - as in Phil Lyn-ott - Lee-nux is acceptable
> for purists.
> 
> L-eye-nux is definitely not.

Let's pretend for a moment that reason rather than the weight of usage
were able to decide this question.  Then, it becomes a matter of how 
most reasonably to anglicise the pronunciation.  One way is to follow
how the man's name gets anglicised.  That is, the Swedish[1] name
"LEE-noos" gets pronounced in English as "LYE-nus".  By that analogy, the
Swedish pronunciation "LEE-nicks" should be rendered in English as
"LYE-nucks".  That is how I pronounced the word for about the first five
years.

Alternatively, I could make a good argument for using the original
Swedish pronuniation -- at the risk of sounding as if you either just
got off the ferry from Malmo, or are one of those precious poseurs who
refuse to anglicise and speak only of Roma, Firenze, Turino, and
"Mosk-va".

The one pronunciation I can find no linguistic justification for
whatsoever is "LINN-icks" or "LINN-ucks", other than being the natural 
way that an English speaker would blindly grope through the letters if
he had no knowledge of where it came from.  And it happens to be the
predominant pronunciation in the western USA, where I live.  

So, rather than always having people look at me peculiarly when I say
the word, and explain to them why my pronunciation makes a bit more
sense than theirs, I switched.  (But I still won't yield on
"KIHlow-metre".  It's simply _not_ "ki-LAWmetre", the way most Yanks
mangle it.)

[1] For the benefit of those unaware of the fact, Torvalds belongs to
the ethnic/linguistic Swedish minority population of Finland.

-- 
Cheers,               "That article and its poster have been cancelled." 
Rick Moen                   -- David B. O'Donnel, sysadmin for America Online
rick at linuxmafia.com