You say tomato I say tomato
We all have different ways of speaking and pronouncing our words - I am no exception. Where I find it most obvious is when talking about programming with fellow programmers, most notably when talking about the programming languages C or C++ (C's successor, or sorts).One of the language keywords is char.
Everyone else I know pronounces it the way it is spelled - char. I pronounce it kar.
The reason is simple, I learned C in isolation, from a book, some 20 years ago. char is the shortened form of character (just as int is the shortened form of integer), consequently the logical pronunciation must begin with a hard k sound not the soft ch sound.
Another word I mispronounce is kludge. When I say it, it rhymes with sludge or fudge. The way everyone else says it, it rhymes with stooge. However, when I use it as a verb or adjective, I use the long oo sound, but as a noun, it is definitely the short u.
Image nabbed from here.
Comments
I come originally from upstate NY and locally where I grew up we said 'Towel' in a funny way. We always pronounced it like 'taall' Sort of without a W in it. Found that out when I grew up and began moving around :-)
I am not familiar with the word kludge so I have yet to research on it. :)
I think I will start using that word in the recruiting community.
I like what the Wikipedia says about it being a backronym.
MOI: oops, I pronounce the arctic fish as char not kar (although, I should know better since I have often heard about Arctic char).
DeeDee: thanks for dropping by and commenting.
MIO: nice to see you back. Hmmm … maybe the soft "ch" is unique to programmers in the Ottawa area - don't really chat with programmers from other locals. There are two wildly different consonants between the u and the e - so the u must be short.
coffee fairy: people around here would say it with a soft ch. I am being buoyed by all this support. A kludge is a inelegant hack or ugly workaround in code, or a mismatch of disparate pieces to get something working. Frankenstein's monster is a kludge.
I use a lot of char in programming (to_char function in Oracle) and like you, it's kar also for me. :)
I am not familiar with the word kludge so I have yet to research on it. :)
lunafish: hmmm … I hadn't checked wikipedia. It seems to support my variant enunciation of kludge.
matt: wow, you studied programming. Cool! Always interesting to learn new things about people. I had originally wanted to call the post "Coding with a LISP" because the car and cdr of LISP immediately came to mind.
For those who don't know, cdr is pronounce could er.
tin-tin: the only people I have heard speak it are Canadian programmers in Ottawa (and students and profs at university). Perhaps the are wide regional differences in pronounciation.
The funny thing is that I do not feel self conscious enough to want to change the way I pronounce the words. I don't feel self conscious at all. As far as I Am concerned, the others are saying it wrong.
But, then again, the is no truly generic programming language; each language has its own speicalized domain and approach to problem solving. I am always bemused to watch people solving problems in one language when a nother is far better suited. It is like the carpenter who only has a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail.