[TUHS] Unix, eunuchs?
Andrzej Popielewicz
vasco at icpnet.pl
Mon Jun 5 20:41:19 AEST 2006
Michael Welle napisaĆ(a):
>Hi,
>
>last week a work mate told us a tale about how Unix came to its
>name. He believes that Unix is named after the term eunuch (a
>homophone of (to?) unix in english language). One can see Unix as a
>
>
Now, that You know where the name unix comes from(see my previous post),
there still is a *funny* coincidence in pronounciation of both words.
In Oxford American Dictionary
eunuch is pronounced as "yoo-nuk" (not all symbols reproduced)
unit is "yoo-nit"
unique is "yoo-neek"
In Webster English Language Dictionary
eunuch is "'yunek"
unit is "'yunet"
unique is "yu'nek,yu'nik"
You can notice, that unix , more similar to unit or unique will be
pronounced differently(?).
It suggests , that although for us foreigners the difference is hard to
be distinguished, but perhaps Americans and Englishmen can hear the
subtle difference above shown in the pronounciation(or perhaps not all).
I suspect , that if the pronounciation were be same many people would
have noticed it before.
It is clear , that opinion of American/English linguistic/language
specialist would be neccesarry.
Andrzej
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