[Mingw-users] Re: How do you pronounce MinGW?

[Soren A <sor...@fa...>]

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 06:29:23 GMT, "Ilion" <il...@tw...> 
wrote in news:001101c2a65e$ce2e6980$cf60608c@loststar:

> How do you say it?
> Min-Go? Min-G-W?

It doesn't make any sense, but nevertheless I usually say "ming-double-u" 
("MING" like in the name of the Chinese dynasty, followed by "W" like in 
the name of the letter 'W').

Earnie's pronunciation is IMO the one that makes *sense* ("min"-"G"-"W")
as far as the *meaning* of the acronym goes, but it is verbally clumsy
and laborious. 

I do think that "min-gew" [hard 'g'] (or "min-gu" for the vast majority
of people in the world who speak langauages that are spelled out with
vowels that default to "long u", like most Romance languages, Japanese,
etc... except that Jap. terminal "u" is generally "swallowed" ...),
might be the best compromize. Like the "Yew" tree or "jewel, blew, flew,
knew". That way, we acknowledge that there's really a "U" sound in there
(from gnU) and keep the "W" more or less silent (as we'd prefer Redmond
to be ;-). 

Or we could go with "min-knew"! That would approximate an alternate
pronuciation of 'gnu' (which is really supposed to have a hard 'g'
followed by a second syllable 'nu', but...). I have an Indian friend
named "Meenu". Yes, then, I want "MinGW" pronounced in honor of my
friend "Meenu". "Min-Knew" (English silent "K").

Boy I need to get back to work ....  ;-)

   Soren A