In natural language research and anthropology there is the construction known as a Shibboleth. Specifically this is defined as when your pronunciation of a word gives away your cultural background.
This isn't just your favourite piece of hi-tech argot, but that favourite thing that lusers will say wrong and you'll know them for the n00b they are?
I've always found this video from the guys as Atlassian made of different pronunciations of "It's a kludge, but put the tuple from the database in the cache" quite amusing. I'm not sure how well you can track people's background from this though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOE8ukQoz6E&eurl=blogs.atlassian.com/developer/
Should URL be pronounced "Earl" or "Yew Are Ell"?
People have been killed for less. That's all I'm saying.
C# - See Sharp or See Hash
WWW - Double yew, Double yew, Double yew or Wuh Wuh Wuh (less syllables)
The word "router", as in a network router, tends to be pronounced in "row-ter" in Australia.
The alternative, "roo-ter", is an Australian colloqialism that is best not used in a professional forum.
From Verity Stob's wonderful sagas of the Borland-ites...
- Chorus: Thou sayest 'Delfee', I sayeth 'Delfye', let us calleth off the whole thing.
- And the Sons of Kahn muttered one unto another saying: "Cripes, here cometh the fruit loops."
Although personally, I have trouble with SQL: "Sequel", "Ess kew ell", or even "squeal"...
How do you pronounce #!? Shebang, hashbang, hashpling, or pound bang?
I occasionally using "pling" for ! myself which confuses anyone who never had an Acorn BBC B.
GIF - Some people pronounce it jif (as in jiffy) and not (as I like to think, correctly) with a hard G sound (as in gift)
Don't forget:
And the ever useful clueless person detector:
:)
My favourite was always
how many syllables does the word 'coax' have?
@Roddy The delph-eye vs delph-ee thing is apparantly tied to region:
http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Delphi_Pronunciation
Personally, I'm in the delph-ee camp.
C-pound is a classic give-away.
OTOH, I often give away how long I've been programming by saying things like "abend" and pronouncing "!" as "bang."
A (philosophy major) friend of mine who had only ever seen the word written and never heard pronounced integer 'in-teg-er' instead of 'in-ter-ger'.
What's most amusing about this thread is the attempts to render a phonetic version of how words are spoken - most of which will be read differently by somebody on an different continent.
Since not many people are familiar with IPA (the phonetic alphabet rather than the beer), there's no unambiguous way to do it in English.
"It's a kludge, but put the tuple from the database in the cache"
Heh. Reminds me of a how-to video for CakePHP (or was it something else?) where the speaker says “Let me just /raut/ that /querry/ to our /dah-dah/ base.” – All of these words pronounced in exactly the wrong (from by POV) way. I found that so painful that I put it in my /etc/motd file and now I see it every time I open a terminal session. ;-)
The big problem with working out n00bs from how they pronounce words is that the "experts" don't agree on the pronunciation either. The problem is that by laughing at someone, you may end up just embarrassing yourself when everyone else in the room says it "wrong" too.
The one that really gets me is "kludge" which should rhyme with "sludge". I hear that on podcasts being said in horrible ways.
My favourite that I think all can agree on is "WiFi", which most everyone pronounces to rhyme with "HiFi" as in "high figh" from high fidelity. I went to a "learn about the web" meeting where one person said "wiff-ee" as in "bad smell". No one corrected him.
The wierder thing to me is how many of these terms i pronounce differently based on context.
I'd pronounce "etc" in a conversation with my wife (non-nerd) one way, but with work people or other nerds in the room, i'd pronounce it the other way, and my wife would have no idea what an "et-see" was.
The other interesting set is how to pronounce symbols. Hash/pound is one, but having work discussions that contain "whack whack" or "slash" could probably get you arrested in an airport these days :D
My favorite is "paradigm" though. i learned a lot of my programming in my tiny little WI hick hometown by getting books and reading them in junior high, with nobody to talk to about them. it was probably years before i heard that word used in a conversation and actually linked it to its "pair-a-dig-em" that i had in my head as a kid!