From: Roedy Green on
On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:41:11 -0500, Joshua Cranmer
<Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

>I've always pronounced it "lin" (as in "linen"), which frequently
>results in me going back and having to say natural log.

From my university years, "log" meant "ln" in most classes. In the
theoretical stuff I was studying nobody ever used base ten logs so
there was no need to discriminate.

As I recall, the engineers pronounced "ln" as if there were almost no
vowel, with a short nondescript vowel like the French oeu in oef.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

Responsible Development is the style of development I aspire to now. It can be summarized by answering the question, �How would I develop if it were my money?� I�m amazed how many theoretical arguments evaporate when faced with this question.
~ Kent Beck (born: 1961 age: 49) , evangelist for extreme programming.
From: BGB / cr88192 on

"Roedy Green" <see_website(a)mindprod.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:jh1qp516dpjid0jdhq8p0qsg3904s55sc9(a)4ax.com...
> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:40:28 -0700, "BGB / cr88192"
> <cr88192(a)hotmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
> said :
>
>>as I see it, pronunciation is essentially a dictionary-lookup scheme
>>anyways, and so edge cases don't necessarily constitute valid general
>>rules.
>
> I watch the language evolving with pronunciations drifting ever
> further from the phonetics.
>

well, it allows the spoken language to develop...

in a way, this is one way in which I am against "spelling reform", since
after all, one would have to determine whos particular dialect was
sufficiently cannonical as to use them as the basis for the new word
spellings, or worse-yet, end up with a teh-crapload of spellings for the
same words, essentially making basic literacy a much larger problem.

granted, a severe split in the lexical and phonetic languages would not be
particularly desirable either, since the words do have some value as
phonetic hints.


<snip, list of examples>

ever been to East-Asia?...
one can go there and hear the ways English is often used...

as well, one may get used to reading some amount of "Engrish", to such an
extent that it no longer looks particularly invalid or confusing...

"fire box is the set open, welcome to foods", or similar...



From: Martin Gregorie on
On Sun, 14 Mar 2010 09:05:43 -0700, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:58:26 -0700, "BGB / cr88192"
> <cr88192(a)hotmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
> said :
>
>>"ls" => "ElEs"
>>"rd" => "Ardi"
>>"mk" => "EmkeI"
>
> FORTH is the only langugage I can recall that specified the
> pronunciation of everything. Back then programmers collaborated over the
> telephone much more frequently.
>
> I still mentally distinguish ' = tick and " = quote, a FORTH convention.
>
> From Xerox, back when they built mainframes I picked up ! = bang.
>
Back in the days of ICL 1900 mainframes and the George 3 OS our usage
was ! = shriek.

George 3 provided a stack of workfiles as part of the macro (=script)
environment. We referred to the stack as "shriekfiles". The top of the
stack was "shriek zero", written !0

As a different example, calling ` backtick is still fairly common Unixese.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
From: Tom Anderson on
On Sun, 14 Mar 2010, Roedy Green wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:41:11 -0500, Joshua Cranmer
> <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
> who said :
>
>> I've always pronounced it "lin" (as in "linen"), which frequently
>> results in me going back and having to say natural log.
>
> From my university years, "log" meant "ln" in most classes. In the
> theoretical stuff I was studying nobody ever used base ten logs so
> there was no need to discriminate.
>
> As I recall, the engineers pronounced "ln" as if there were almost no
> vowel, with a short nondescript vowel like the French oeu in oef.

Or like the e in 'taken' - that's called a schwa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

tom

--
I have been trying to find a way of framing this but yes, a light meal is
probably preferable to a heavy one under the circumstances. -- ninebelow
From: BGB / cr88192 on

"Tom Anderson" <twic(a)urchin.earth.li> wrote in message
news:alpine.DEB.1.10.1003141804280.23522(a)urchin.earth.li...
> On Sun, 14 Mar 2010, Roedy Green wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:41:11 -0500, Joshua Cranmer
>> <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
>> who said :
>>
>>> I've always pronounced it "lin" (as in "linen"), which frequently
>>> results in me going back and having to say natural log.
>>
>> From my university years, "log" meant "ln" in most classes. In the
>> theoretical stuff I was studying nobody ever used base ten logs so
>> there was no need to discriminate.
>>
>> As I recall, the engineers pronounced "ln" as if there were almost no
>> vowel, with a short nondescript vowel like the French oeu in oef.
>
> Or like the e in 'taken' - that's called a schwa:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
>

odd...

in my case it is more like /teIkEn/ (tay-ken), or maybe /teIkIn/ (tay-kin).