Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
How do you pronounce the following acronyms? Is a tool assisted speedrun a "Tass" or a T-A-S? Is a frequently asked questions document a "Fack" or an F-A-Q? Is the original Nintendo Entertainment System called the "Ness" or N-E-S? (Likewise for the Super Nintendo-- the "Sness" or the S-N-E-S or possibly the Super N-E-S?) Is a graphical user interface a "Gooey" or a G-U-I? Is a uniform resource locator (okay, I admit I had to look it up...) an "Earl" or a U-R-L? For me, I can't help but call a frequently asked questions document a "fack" but all the rest I spell out. I'm not sure why. People saying "gooey" for some reason really annoys me. In fact, most of the time when people pronounce an acronym as a word when it isn't clearly supposed to be one is at least mildly irritating to me. For some reason, though, "fack" gets a free pass. So where do you draw the line? If you like to spell out acronyms, do you take it to extremes like Yahtzee and insist on saying S-T-A-L-K-E-R: Clear Sky? If you like to pronounce acronyms, do you pronounce them even when they don't have enough vowels? As you type your response, are you wondering if you should disable "hutmul" or "bubcode"? Please include other acronyms that interest or irritate you and, if possible, try to keep them TAS- or web-related.
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
Most people spell out "F A Q", it seems. I thought it was weird the first time I heard it. GIF has a hard G, like Jif.
Is a graphical user interface a "Gooey" or a G-U-I?
I just call it a "you-eye", since it's usually unambiguous which kind of interface I'm talking about. Also, we have this thread already: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5353
arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
Technically only the ones that get pronounced as words are acronyms, while the ones pronounced as successive letter-names are initialisms; IMO the only acronyms on the list are FAQ and GUI, although both were initially initialisms.
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Post subject: Re: Acronyms
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Bobo the King wrote:
Is a tool assisted speedrun a "Tass" or a T-A-S?
I say Tass.
Is a frequently asked questions document a "Fack" or an F-A-Q?
Fack
Is the original Nintendo Entertainment System called the "Ness" or N-E-S? (Likewise for the Super Nintendo-- the "Sness" or the S-N-E-S or possibly the Super N-E-S?)
I say Ness and Sness.
Is a graphical user interface a "Gooey" or a G-U-I?
I say Gooey.
Is a uniform resource locator (okay, I admit I had to look it up...) an "Earl" or a U-R-L?
I say U-R-L, hehehe.
upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (391)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
Dromiceius wrote:
GIF has a hard G, like Jif.
that's a soft G, although for a long time I thought it had a hard G, as in golf
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Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Usually, TLAs get pronounced in their initial forms, while anything higher than three letters gets merged. I really hate when people say "fak" instead of "FAQ," since it's really easy to blur the meaning of the first.
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 18
Location: Hungary
In Hungarian, most acronyms are pronounced as a word if it's pleasant to pronounce. And usually the pronunciation changes to Hungarian, which may sound quite different from the original language. One special case: FAQ is usually called Gy.I.K. and pronounced "gyík" which means "lizard" in Hungarian.
Limne
Any
Joined: 2/24/2010
Posts: 153
For most of these I'm pretty sure I use both depending on the context and which has the more appropriate prosodic quality for the sentence it appears in. I find that spelling things out can be easier on people not likely to be familiar with the various abbreviations. Sometimes I even say things like "Super N-E-S" too.
Active player (355)
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
hmm that also makes me wonder whether some acronyms are considered to rhyme... for instance FPS and RTS Ef-Pea-Ess and Are-Tea-Ess do rhyme by Shooter and Strategy do not :P
TASes: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/Movies-298up-Obs.html]Mr. Nutz (SNES), Young Merlin 100% (SNES), Animaniacs 100% (SNES)[/URL]