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From: gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of 'char'
Message-ID: <2384@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: Tue, 13-Oct-87 14:35:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: megaron.2384
Posted: Tue Oct 13 14:35:49 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 04:59:19 EDT
References: <4575@cae780.TEK.COM>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 21
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:4881 comp.lang.misc:740
In-reply-to: comdisco@cae780.TEK.COM's message of 9 Oct 87 00:18:25 GMT


In article <4575@cae780.TEK.COM> comdisco@cae780.TEK.COM (Comdisco) writes:

	   We are having an intense debate in our company which is costing
   us an enormous amount of time and money.  The debate concerns the proper
   pronunciation of the C language variable type "char".

Oh oh.  You have just inflicted your internal war on two innocent
newsgroups.  As a sometimes student of linguistics, maybe I can dampen
the hostilities by pointing out that there is no such thing as a
"proper" pronunciation.  A natural language is defined by the speakers
of the language, and where there is a consensus on a pronunciation,
that pronunciation may be called "normal" or "standard" within the
dialect in question.

This is not to say that it is impossible to define standards, or that
standards are not important, but you are never going convince people
by argument that the way they pronounce a word is wrong.  Do the net
a favor and don't try.  I have a suggestion to offer the poster: take
a vote and declare the majority preference the standard.  _Before_ you
take the vote, make sure everyone agrees to give up his personal
preference if he is outvoted.