• 15 Posts
  • 1.41K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle












  • Irrelevant, acronyms and initialisms don’t depend on the underlying words they stand for beyond the first letter of each word. You can’t use the word underlying C or any of the other letters for grammatical justification or pronunciation.

    Each letter must stand on its own and be governed by pronunciation rules independently of its underlying word, if it cannot form a sensible pronounceable word (Like FBI, CIA, SQL, SCSI) on its own it’s an initialism. If it can (Like NASA) then it’s an acronym.




  • The final “i” follows the convention of being pronounced as a short vowel (/ɪ/), like in “mini” or “city.” This contrasts with words like “pie” or “die,” where the “i” is part of a diphthong (/aɪ/). Also, “MIDI” is an acronym where the letters form a pronounceable word without modification, and in such cases, a short “i” is more common when it’s in the middle or at the end of the word. Hence, “mid-ee” sticks to these phonetic rules


  • “Taxi” comes from the French word “taximètre” and its shortened form “taxi,” which itself comes from the Latin “taxa,” meaning charge or rate. In this case, the “i” at the end of “taxi” is pronounced as a short vowel sound (/ɪ/), like the “i” in “sit,” rather than a long “eye” sound (/aɪ/). English has phonetic rules where an “i” at the end of a word is pronounced as a short vowel when preceded by a consonant, especially when the word has a foreign language origin. This contrasts with words like “alibi” or “butterfly,” where the “i” is part of a longer syllable or a diphthong. Therefore, “Taxi” is pronounced “tak-see” following these conventions.

    You’re actually trying to dictate pronunciation in English?

    Wym? This is an English community and the thread is about English initialisms, acronyms and words. Why would I not reference English grammatical rules?


  • To get Scuzzy you have to fundamentally modify SCSI and break a few grammatical rules

    In English, “S” before a consonant typically retains its standard /s/ sound (as in “stop” or “snow”). Pronouncing “SCSI” as “Scuzzy” violates this by softening the second “S” into a /z/ sound before the consonant “Z,” which doesn’t follow the rule where “S” remains /s/ unless a voicing context (such as between two vowels) alters it.

    English has rules governing when consonants are “soft” (like “S” becoming /z/) or “hard” (like “C” becoming /k/). In “SCSI,” these letters maintain their distinct pronunciations, but when forced into “Scuzzy,” the “C” becomes part of a hard /sk/ sound, and the second “S” is softened into /z/. These changes are not guided by typical English consonant-hardening rules, especially since “SCSI” does not include the contextual elements that normally trigger these shifts (e.g., vowel placement following “C” in certain cases).

    You also have to add whole new vowels like “u” and “y”



  • Nah, and I can prove it mathgramatically

    In order to make GUI pronounceable you have to add in vowels and blend consonants and fundamentally changes it’s pronociation. GUI is meant to have each letter on its own, and on their own those letters cannot make the “oo” and “ee” sounds

    On their own they make the following pronunciations:

    G: Pronounced as /dʒi/

    U: Pronounced as /ju/ (like “you”)

    I: Pronounced as /aɪ/ (like “eye”), with a long “i” sound

    In contrast, true acronyms like “NASA” form a pronounceable word naturally without requiring any modifications, making “Gooey” a grammatically improper pronunciation of “GUI.”