Re: hi-tech pronunciation

["Ridder, Fred" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

Dave,
The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) (which is on several
mirror sites in North America including http://nightflight.com/foldoc/ )
does provide pronunciations for some of the stranger terms it defines
(for example, DRECNET), but not for the common terms you mention.

FWIW, the names of the various flavors of RAM are generally
pronounced by spelling out the prefix followed by "ram" to emphasize
the distinction between types. For example, DRAM is pronounced
dee-ram, SDRAM is pronounced ess-dee-ram, VRAM is vee-ram,
and so on.

The pronunciation of GIF, on the other hand, is no so clear cut. I have
heard that at CompuServe, the team that developed the format pronounced
it with a soft g, which always makes me think of a certain too-sweet
brand of peanut butter. I've always preferred to pronounce it like "gift"
without the final t, but this seems to be the minority position (though
not a small minority...)

Fred Ridder  (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

And to keep our marketing people happy:
Get the Dialogic Edge at:  http://www.dialogic.com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Whelan [SMTP:dwhelan -at- PANGEA -dot- CA]
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 1998 10:37 PM
> Subject:      hi-tech pronunciation
>
> Does anyone know of a web site that gives the preferred pronunciation of
> hi-tech terms? For example, is DRAM pronounced dram or dee-ram, is .gif
> pronounced jif as in jiffy or gif as in gift? I prefer the latter form in
> both cases, but others disagree.
>
> Regards,
> Dave.
>
> ****************************************************
> David P. Whelan, Whelan Technical Services
> Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (204) 334-1339
>  mailto:dwhelan -at- ieee -dot- org
>  http://www.pangea.ca/~dwhelan
> ****************************************************