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Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
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eti:

--- Quote from: tooki 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”.

--- End quote ---

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.
eti:
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
AndyBeez:

--- Quote from: gbaddeley 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 (Jim Pease etc) I had never heard it pronounced sod-der. I was wondering if he had a speech impediment 🤔

--- End quote ---
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.
pdenisowski:

--- Quote from: tooki 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

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote from: tooki on December 22, 2022, 07:54:43 am ---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”.

--- End quote ---

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.
pdenisowski:

--- Quote from: eti on December 22, 2022, 08:22:59 am ---I’m not sure I’d pick this forum as a reference for correctness of the English language or pronunciation rules.
--- End quote ---

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 :)
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