People also like to argue it’s an acronym, but do you pronounce NASA the same as you pronounce the first letter of each word of National Aeronautics and Space Administration?
Um, yes?
I’m assuming we’re talking about the two A letters here, since nothing comes to mind about a different pronunciation of N or S in American English.
In American English - at least in my experience - the first sound in aeronautics is exactly the same as in “air,” which is also the same as in “administration.” We don’t generally say it as in “ear-onautocs.”
Also, I’m curious - has anyone ever published a study describing whether or not the difference in pronunciation differs between sectors in the computer science community? Particularly, is there a difference between normal developers and those who write in a Lisp?
SCUBA, LASER, JPEG, ROM, etc. all break the “pronounced as the nested word” argument.
I’m down for people to pronounce it however they please (assuming it’s recognizable as gif), but the post-hoc rationalizations trying to prove their side as the one true pronunciation are silly. The only rationalization that makes any sense to me is the “creator pronounces it as jif”, but language doesn’t work that way so even that doesn’t matter as far as “one true pronunciation” goes.
