Author Topic: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)  (Read 16650 times)

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Offline Nusa

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #75 on: December 21, 2022, 07:59:41 pm »
Two problems with the question, IMO. First is that the individual's background is more important than their current location. Second is that the US is a big enough place that regional differences are significant.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #76 on: December 21, 2022, 08:18:28 pm »
The thread was all about how words are pronounced in various parts of the world, if you noticed. So you'll be surprised how some words can be prounounced differently in different parts of the world, they already are within the same country. All the more for acronyms. In some languages, it is even unusual to pronounce acronyms as nouns. The world is a big place.

But ARM is a name, the name of a company and a brand. Usually, the people who own a name get to choose how it should be pronounced. If you pronounce it differently than the owner of the name, then they are entitled to tell you that you are wrong.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #77 on: December 21, 2022, 08:20:56 pm »
The thread was all about how words are pronounced in various parts of the world, if you noticed. So you'll be surprised how some words can be prounounced differently in different parts of the world, they already are within the same country. All the more for acronyms. In some languages, it is even unusual to pronounce acronyms as nouns. The world is a big place.

But ARM is a name, the name of a company and a brand. Usually, the people who own a name get to choose how it should be pronounced. If you pronounce it differently than the owner of the name, then they are entitled to tell you that you are wrong.

In my current position, I've been on a number of conference calls with ARM employees, and they always pronounce it "arm".
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Offline TimFox

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #78 on: December 21, 2022, 09:03:14 pm »
"ARM" is a good example of an acronym, a word formed from a pronounceable abbreviation.
 

Online Dave Wise

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #79 on: December 21, 2022, 09:43:11 pm »
I've used solder for 55 years and never heard an "L" until I watched a Dave video :)

Another Dave
US west coast, brought up by Minnesotans, you betcha.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #80 on: December 21, 2022, 10:56:56 pm »
Even in American English, there is a pronunciation difference between "calm" and "cam".

That makes me think of the "Mary", "marry", "merry" convergence, and wonder if there is any part of America where calm and cam sound the same?

My knowledge of American dialect is not encyclopedic, but I know of several places where the word calm is pronounced with little or no ell sound.  But in all of those areas the word cam is easily distinguished because the sound of the a is totally different in the two words.  In no place that I have visited are the two words pronounced similarly.

Some American dialects, particularly ones in the Deep South, sound really bizarre to my West Coast ears. Example: "clothes" is pronounced "clays".
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Online themadhippy

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #81 on: December 21, 2022, 11:03:09 pm »
Quote
Example: "clothes" is pronounced "clays".
sounds like glaswegian
 
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Offline gbaddeley

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #82 on: December 22, 2022, 07:31:35 am »
I’m an Aussie that started soldering when I was about 12, in the 1970’s. Until 2018, when I started getting into YouTube electronics videos (Bob Pease etc) I had never heard it pronounced sod-der. I was wondering if he had a speech impediment 🤔
« Last Edit: December 22, 2022, 11:43:09 am by gbaddeley »
Glenn
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #83 on: December 22, 2022, 07:50:07 am »
Ever since ARM was first founded in the UK I've heard it pronounced "arm". I have never heard anyone say "A.R.M.". Make of that what you will.

I've worked at companies that either use or produce ARM parts for twenty years and I've never heard anyone call it "A.R.M." -- always "arm".

The thread was all about how words are pronounced in various parts of the world, if you noticed. So you'll be surprised how some words can be prounounced differently in different parts of the world, they already are within the same country. All the more for acronyms. In some languages, it is even unusual to pronounce acronyms as nouns. The world is a big place.
Nobody disagrees with that in principle. But I’ve never heard ARM pronounced spelled-out in any language. Everyone says “arm”, with the exact pronunciation of the three sounds within varying on the language.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #84 on: December 22, 2022, 07:54:43 am »
I just made myself chuckle by wondering if anyone ever pronounced IBM as “ibbum” or something. :P

A funny, now largely obsolete acronym, is SCSI: only noobs pronounce it “ess see ess eye”. Likely apocryphally, some people early on suggested pronouncing it “sexy”. But the pronunciation that stuck, not only in English but also in many other languages, was “scuzzy”.
 
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Offline eti

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #85 on: December 22, 2022, 08:05:20 am »
I just made myself chuckle by wondering if anyone ever pronounced IBM as “ibbum” or something. :P

A funny, now largely obsolete acronym, is SCSI: only noobs pronounce it “ess see ess eye”. Likely apocryphally, some people early on suggested pronouncing it “sexy”. But the pronunciation that stuck, not only in English but also in many other languages, was “scuzzy”.

Well done for teaching the world the “correct” way to pronounce an acronym. lol.

Acronyms are, by their very definition, a contraction of a description into its initial letters to avoid tediously speaking out the entire description ; there is no “correct” way to pronounce them, they aren’t meant to be pronounced. To say what you’ve said is to say “that’s the incorrect pronunciation of that slang” - in essence, it’s a matter of choice whether one creates a phonetic analogue of said acronym so it rolls of the tongue more easily, or whether they formally say “Ess See Ess Eye” <——  (phonetically worded for clarity).

One might even say that formally pronounced, letter by letter, is more correct than the “slang” equivalent of forming these contractions back into words, since there’s only marketing people who sometimes create pronounced acronyms for the same reason anyone else does; to make them memorable (and profitable, in their particular case.)

“NICAM” is an example of this, but even then, that doesn’t mean it’s “right”, and that any other spoken version of “NICAM” letter by letter is, therefore, “wrong”, it’s just what happened to stick.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2022, 08:09:15 am by eti »
 

Offline eti

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #86 on: December 22, 2022, 08:22:59 am »
Based on the sheer amount of atrocious spelling and grammatical errors even on BASIC words (and yes some are dyslexic and can’t be helped), which I’ve seen on EEVblog over the years (and a fair number from the great founder, even), I’m not sure I’d pick this forum as a reference for correctness of the English language or pronunciation rules. I’d point folks maybe to: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/29374/pronouncing-acronyms
 

Offline AndyBeez

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #87 on: December 22, 2022, 09:37:55 am »
I’m an Aussie that started soldering when I was about 12, in the 1970’s. Until 2018, when I started getting into YouTube electronics videos (Jim Pease etc) I had never heard it pronounced sod-der. I was wondering if he had a speech impediment 🤔
G'day mate. Same pondering here in the UK.

I wonder if they wear out their shoe sods rather than shoe souls, get on the sod-train and sell their sods to the devil?

More worryingly, sod-dering can be used in English as a slang term for man-o-man action. Keep your soddering iron hot? I don't think so. We also use, sodding around or sodding about, to describe incompetent behaviour.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2022, 09:43:58 am by AndyBeez »
 

Offline pdenisowski

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #88 on: December 22, 2022, 09:46:55 am »
I just made myself chuckle by wondering if anyone ever pronounced IBM as “ibbum” or something. :P

And it goes the other way too.  I had been in China for almost a week before I realized that the Chinese were pronouncing "app" as A-P-P.

A funny, now largely obsolete acronym, is SCSI: only noobs pronounce it “ess see ess eye”. Likely apocryphally, some people early on suggested pronouncing it “sexy”. But the pronunciation that stuck, not only in English but also in many other languages, was “scuzzy”.

I wonder which came first, SCSI or SCPI ("skippy")? 

I will say that although I pronounce GPIB as "gee-pib," I also hear plenty of people spell that one out (G.P.I.B.)

And serial protocol acronyms are all over the place.  Some are spelled out (USB, PCIe), some are read as words (SPI, CAN), some are hybrids (UART - you-art) and one is even read in "mathspeak" (I2C - i-squared-c).

As someone who does a lot of technical presentations and videos, how to pronounce acronyms is actually a pretty important topic.  I did a webinar on NVIS and we had a bit of a debate about how I should pronounce "NVIS".  In the end, I chose to use "nih-vus" because that's how most of our .mil/.gov customers pronounce this, but there were plenty of votes for N.V.I.S. as well.
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Offline pdenisowski

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #89 on: December 22, 2022, 10:00:03 am »
I’m not sure I’d pick this forum as a reference for correctness of the English language or pronunciation rules.

Point taken :)   But my personal feeling is that this forum is an excellent reference for  technical (and specifically, electronics-related) English pronunciation and usage.

When I was in engineering school I supported myself in part by working as a translator, and it drove me absolutely crazy when non-technical editors would tell me the "correct" way to translate or phrase technical concepts in English.  The "correct" way is always how native speakers working in that field say it :)
« Last Edit: December 22, 2022, 10:01:37 am by pdenisowski »
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Offline kjpye

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #90 on: December 22, 2022, 10:05:15 am »
and one is even read in "mathspeak" (I2C - i-squared-c).

which is of course the "correct" pronunciation. Its the spelling which is wrong. The original spelling was I²C, but people were using systems which were incapable of representing that, or were incapable of typing it, so it became corrupted to I2C; at least enough of the origin was remembered to keep the "i-squared-c" pronunciation.
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #91 on: December 22, 2022, 10:11:20 am »
I just made myself chuckle by wondering if anyone ever pronounced IBM as “ibbum” or something. :P

A funny, now largely obsolete acronym, is SCSI: only noobs pronounce it “ess see ess eye”. Likely apocryphally, some people early on suggested pronouncing it “sexy”. But the pronunciation that stuck, not only in English but also in many other languages, was “scuzzy”.

Well done for teaching the world the “correct” way to pronounce an acronym. lol.

Acronyms are, by their very definition, a contraction of a description into its initial letters to avoid tediously speaking out the entire description ; there is no “correct” way to pronounce them, they aren’t meant to be pronounced. To say what you’ve said is to say “that’s the incorrect pronunciation of that slang” - in essence, it’s a matter of choice whether one creates a phonetic analogue of said acronym so it rolls of the tongue more easily, or whether they formally say “Ess See Ess Eye” <——  (phonetically worded for clarity).

One might even say that formally pronounced, letter by letter, is more correct than the “slang” equivalent of forming these contractions back into words, since there’s only marketing people who sometimes create pronounced acronyms for the same reason anyone else does; to make them memorable (and profitable, in their particular case.)

“NICAM” is an example of this, but even then, that doesn’t mean it’s “right”, and that any other spoken version of “NICAM” letter by letter is, therefore, “wrong”, it’s just what happened to stick.
I never said “right” or “wrong”. I said only noobs spell it out, which isn’t the same thing. Only noobs spell it out because a) they haven’t learned the common pronunciation, and b) haven’t yet gotten tired of how much longer spelling it out is. (“ess see ess eye” is four syllables, “scuzzy” is two.)
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #92 on: December 22, 2022, 10:15:44 am »
I wonder which came first, SCSI or SCPI ("skippy")? 
SCSI was first, standardized in 1986. SCPI was released in 1990, by which point SCSI was already widespread in UNIX workstations, Macs, and high end PCs.
 

Offline pdenisowski

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #93 on: December 22, 2022, 10:49:29 am »
I wonder which came first, SCSI or SCPI ("skippy")? 
SCSI was first, standardized in 1986. SCPI was released in 1990, by which point SCSI was already widespread in UNIX workstations, Macs, and high end PCs.

I actually built a PC (from scrap parts) that had SCSI drives and a GPIB interface and I used it to control instruments via SCPI :) 

Pity that FDDI ("fiddy") was already dead at that point, otherwise I might have used that for the LAN connection - way faster than Token Ring :)
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Offline AndyBeez

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #94 on: December 22, 2022, 12:22:46 pm »
I remember a meeting where a Canadian dude was going on and on about the need to implement sequel methodologies. After an hour we realised he was talking about S-Q-L. MySQL to be accurate. Yep, done that.

As for Rijndael Ecryption, just accept yanks are going to call it rain doll hashing.

Re Kicad; is it Kye-Cad or Key-Cad? :box:FIGHT
 

Offline JohanH

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #95 on: December 22, 2022, 12:54:55 pm »
Re Kicad; is it Kye-Cad or Key-Cad? :box:FIGHT

Wikipedia says (/ˈkiːˌkæd/ KEE-kad) and that's how the core developers pronounce it. But each unto his own. That's how languages work. You will pronounce a word with your own accent that feels most comfortable. Only if your own pronunciation stands out, you will try to "correct" it and adjust to your surroundings.

And that leads to something I observed. In some of the latest videos with Linus Torvalds, I heard that he is pronouncing his own name in the American way (lye-nus), instead of how he originally pronounced it in his Finland Swedish (lee-nus) (Linus is btw pronounced with the "ee" vocal in most European languages, except English). Linux is also supposed to be pronounced in the same style (lee-nuks).
 

Online themadhippy

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #96 on: December 22, 2022, 01:08:22 pm »

Quote
I wonder which came first, SCSI or SCPI ("skippy")? 
skippys been bouncing around since 1968
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #97 on: December 22, 2022, 01:21:32 pm »
One that amuses me is the various pronunciations of Aldi and Lidl I hear in the UK. The greater the speaker's snobbishness, the more outlandish they seem to become!  ;D
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline ebastler

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #98 on: December 22, 2022, 01:43:07 pm »
One that amuses me is the various pronunciations of Aldi and Lidl I hear in the UK. The greater the speaker's snobbishness, the more outlandish they seem to become!  ;D

That one is easy -- "ull-dee" and "leedl". :)  But I assume an anglicized pronunciation is normally used in the UK and US?
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #99 on: December 22, 2022, 01:59:27 pm »
Ah, thanks, the  official versions. There have been a few tv programmes recently on how they achieve their pricing and the famous centre isles - even senior executives, both German and British seem to have variations.

Yes, they are anglicized a bit, typically al-dee and, well, li-dl. Aul-dee seems to be spreading, together with ly-dl among the folks I previously mentioned.
Best Regards, Chris
 


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