[dcow]

I believe it officially is pronounced the same as demon. But colloquially I hear a lot of (and sometimes find myself using) “damon”.

[whartung]

I’m in the Matt Damon camp. Always pronounced it that way, never really gave it much thought. Just seems “right” to me.

[bbor]

Hard agree. It's an archaic word, it seems a shame not to revel in that fact whenever you use it! I've been using "automata" a lot recently, and that's another one that is just more fun the unusual way. Also it helps that it's clear either way -- no one will be confused upon hearing "daymon" even if they're not used to it, unlike "etsee", "user-slash-libe", "user-slash-bine". Or, god forbid, "oo-zir slash"...

[JadeNB]

And now we can perhaps hash out whether the `lib` in `/usr/lib` is pronounced with a long or short 'i'. I hope I'm not the only one who pronounced it the first way with no real thought, and never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

[brianmurphy]

I have always pronounced lib like the word liberal.

I was mind-blown the first time I heard someone pronounce etc as "et-see".

et-see rolls off the tongue so much better than ee-tee-see that it makes perfect sense now.

[emmelaich]

I've pronounced it as `etcet` as short for `et cetera`. But that's probably my Australian habit of shortening everything.

[dpassens]

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

[macintux]

I've been pronouncing it with the short 'i' for 30 years, but mainly, possibly only, in my head.

In 1998 I started a new job, and my boss pronounced "URL" as "earl". That threw me for a loop, had to fight my way through our first conversation before I figured out what he was saying.

[bitwize]

I pronounce API as "appy", which sometimes draws quizzical looks (people think I'm using next-level cutesy slang for "application"). But I never could do the "earl" thing. Or "sequel".

[JadeNB]

> Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'?

Yep, that's what I meant to say with:

> … never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

But maybe the sentence structure was too tortured for it to be clear what I was saying.

> Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

Oh, shoot, even after I noticed the logical pronunciation of "lib" (long 'i') it never occurred to me that the same applied to "bin". I guess I just can't say any paths out loud any more.

[fwip]

Perhaps the difference for you is that "bin" is already an English word with an official pronunciation.

Personally, I also use short-i for "lib," because I tend to pronounce shortenings of text as if they were words themselves.

[dpassens]

> that's what I meant to say

Ah, that makes sense. I thought you meant long 'i' as in extending the duration of the 'i' sound, like in 'beep' vs 'bip'.

[saltcured]

Do you pronounce the vowel in /var as in "bar" or as in "bare"?

Also, for those who try to pronounce everything rather than spell them out, where does it end?

I now have a newly discovered, morbid interest in how such folks say path elements like "selinux", "httpd", and "pgsql"...

[JadeNB]

> Do you pronounce the vowel in /var as in "bar" or as in "bare"?

Ha, they're everywhere!