English abbreviations and IT titles that we mispronounce

The previous article on the pronunciation of English words received a lot of positive feedback, so I decided to continue this topic and talk about abbreviations and proper names.



If possible, I will attach an IPA transcription for US English to each word, a Russian “simplified” transcription and a link to a video in which you can hear how the word is spoken by the speakers.

In cases where the pronunciation is obvious from the explanation, IPA transcription or video may be skipped. And before moving on to the article, I want to say once again that Russian transcription is for reference only, and I consider inappropriate discussions like “visiwig” or “wisiuig”, “amazon” or “amazan” inappropriate.

And in order to avoid misunderstandings - all that is indicated in the article concerns the English-speaking environment and communication in English. In Russian and other languages, all these words can be pronounced as it has developed historically in a particular environment.

Let's start with IT cuts. Most of them are spelled, but there are exceptions that are either acronyms or simply historically have a shorter reading:

• AFAIK / ə´feik / (afeik)
• ASAP / ˌeɪ ɛs eɪ ˈpi /, / ˈeɪsæp / (hey-es-her-pee, esep) - you can find both options, but the first is more characteristic of Britain.
• ASCII / ˈæski / (asky)
• GNU / ɡnuː / (wildebeest)
• GUI - here we are lucky, and in the English version it is pronounced as "gui".
• ICANN / ˈaɪ kæn / (i-ken)
• ISO / ˈaɪsoʊ / (aisou) - the most interesting thing is that this is not an abbreviation for the first letters, but simply the name of the organization. More details can be read here .
• JSON () — , .
• LINQ — : «» «́».
• REST — , , «---» .
• SQL /ˈsiːkwəl/, /ˌɛs kjˌuː ˈɛl/ — , «» «--». .
• SOAP /soʊp/ (́) — «́» .
• WSDL /ˈwɪz dəl/ (́) — «---» , «----» , ? «w» .
• WYSIWYG /ˈwɪziwɪɡ/ (́)
• XAML /ˈzæməl/ (́) — «».
• ZIP - regardless of whether it is a zip code, an archiver or a file extension, it sounds like a “zip”.
• etc. / ˌƐt ˈsɛtərə /, / ˌɛtˈsɛtrə /, / ɪtˈsɛtərə /, / ɪt ˈsɛtrə / - any of the “et-seter”, “et-setra”, “it-setra”, “it-setra” will be correct, since Latin "et cetera". But quite often, and even from the natives, one can hear an “exetra,” which is not the norm.

There are also a number of abbreviations that in English do not stand out among others, but the Russian-speaking audience should pay special attention to them, since we are used to pronouncing them as we feel comfortable:

• An API is not an API, it is an IP.
• IO - "oh-oh."
• IE is “ah.”
• AI is hey-ai.
• IDE - "ai-di."
• EXE - “and-ex-and”, the familiar “exe” may be incomprehensible to English-speaking colleagues, several times met similar situations.
• AWS is “double-u-es,” not “a-ve-es."
• JWT - “dj-double-u-ti” or “jot” (the second option is considered “canonical” for this term), very often from my colleagues I hear the wrong version of “gi-vi-ti”, which will be understood by natives as “GVT” .

In the above examples, it is easy to notice that the Russian-speaking environment is characterized by erroneous pronunciation of English letters, even if we are talking about the use of abbreviations in English. Consider the most problematic letters:

• A is “hey,” and if you say “a,” a native English speaker can understand it as “R.”
• R is the opposite situation, the letter “er” is not in the English alphabet, and instead of it there is “a” or “ar” (depending on the pronunciation developed in a given territory).
• E — «» , «». «» «» .
• H — «», «---» - , «---».
• J — «». , G ( «») , J - «» «».
• K — «»
• W — . - «», «» «», . «-».
• X — «», «».
• Y — «», «».
• Z - here the situation is interesting - the British and Americans pronounce it differently. As far as I notice, we are accustomed to the British version of “zed”, but in North America it is customary to call this letter “z”. Therefore, DMZ in the US will be more often pronounced as “di-em-zi”.

There is another category of abbreviations that I would like to consider separately - those where there are several identical letters in a row. With them, too, a pattern is not always observed:

• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS - here I heard two options from the actives: either pronouncing each letter (“ah, hey, hey es”, “pey hey hey es”, “hey hey hey es”), either pronouncing two “a” as one long sound (“ayes”, “pees”, “sees”, or the same, but with a long sound “a” in the middle).
• IEEE - in this case, three letters in a row are read as "triple-i", i.e. the whole abbreviation reads as “ai-triple-i”.
• DDD is just "di-di-di."
• WWW - in the general case, this is “double-y-double-y-double-y”, but depending on the region, abbreviations of the form “dub-y-dub-yu-dub-y” or even “dub-dub-dub” can be found ".

Let's move on to proper nouns, and first of all, consider “problematic” company names.

• Amazon / ˈæməz (ə) n / (emazan) - accent on the first syllable.
• Verizon / vəˈraɪz (ə) n / (version) - this and the previous company in the list have the same endings in the name, but different reading of the letter before the end. Some would like to say “ameyzn” on the first, and “verizon” on the second, but that would be wrong.
• Adobe / əˈdoʊbi / - although we are used to reading it as “adobe”, “at home” this company is called “adoubi” or “adobi”.
• Nike /ˈnaɪki/ (́) — IT-, . , Adobe, .
• ASUS (́-)
• EPAM (́) — , «» ;)
• Cisco — , «» , , San-Francisco «́».
• Logitech — – «», «», «», — «́».
• McAfee (́)
• ZyXel - everywhere it is indicated that the correct pronunciation is “zay-sel”, although in some videos from the company itself you can hear both “zay-zel” and “zay-xel”. There is even a song on this subject. And you can also meet a video where random passersby are asked to read this name.

And now it is the turn of software products and some other proper names that can be found in IT.

• Azure / ˈæʒər / (ezhur) - as is often the case with proper names, not all native speakers name them equally correctly. “Correct” in this case is how the brand owner considers it necessary. Several times I heard from the American colleagues the wrong version of "azure", but this, of course, did not interfere with understanding. And this despite the fact that the word in English exists and is pronounced as I wrote in the transcription.
• Apache /əˈpætʃi/ (́) — Adobe Nike, .
• Chrome /kroʊm/ () — , «ch» «».
• Excel /ɪkˈsɛl/ (́) — , «́» .
• Git () — , «», . IT , «» — JIT, .
• GNOME (́) — , «gn» , «» . - , — .
• Kubernetes (́) — , , .
• Nginx (́-)
• NuGet (́) — «».
• OAuth2 (-́ , -́ ) — «» — θ, — «think».
• Redux (́) — , .
• Ruby (́) — «».
• PostgreSQL /ˈpoʊstɡrɛs ˌkjuː ˈɛl/ (--) — , , , . , , .
• Python /ˈpaɪθɑn/ (́c) — θ.
• Qt / kjut / - not “kew-ti”, pronounced in the same way as the word “cute”.
• Service Fabric (service f e brik) - Russian-speaking colleagues in the second word persistently emphasize the last syllable.
• Visio (Visio)

There were many comments on the previous article discussing the pronunciation of automobile brands. And although this is not directly related to IT, I will include in this article as a “bonus” several examples of names that in English pronunciation are noticeably different from our usual ones (but this does not mean that they also sound in the original language):

• BMW - well, you understand, the rules for abbreviations are mentioned above in the article. This is bi-em-double-u, with no options.
• Hyundai - has a lot of pronunciation options in English, I don’t even see the point of painting everything. In the US, most often met "Hyundai".
• Mercedes / mərˈseɪ diz / (Mercedes)
• Subaru (subaru) - emphasis on the first syllable, as in the "original" Japanese version.

Lists of words can go on for a long time, especially if you pay attention to more exotic names and abbreviations, but I will stop here. If you missed something important - write. And in the next article on the topic of English, I will try to collect the most popular gross translation and grammar errors that can be heard from Russian-speaking colleagues.