debby-an and lie-nucks

phonoloblog just made a switch from RedHat Linux to Debian GNU/Linux. I think it's a good change, regardless of whether Red Hat's support license is expiring or not. Red Hat has become quite bloated in the last few years because they started including many applications in the "standard" install that most people never use. if they would have just kept with the basics and added only the apps to make it run well, i think the user base would have appreciated it a lot. i mean, really, do you need 2-3 cd's to install a version of an OS that can be fully functional (including X) with only 100MB of software?

anyway, seeing RedHat and Debian in one sentence made me think of how my pronunciation of certain words has changed. back in 1997, when i first toyed around Linux on my computer[1], i pronounced it lie-nucks. since i was the only one in a 100 mile radius using Linux, there wasn't much opportunity for me to hear others say it. i think i first heard someone say Linux like this during my last year of high school, and it is now my only way of saying it.

this brings me to how i pronounced Debian up until five weeks ago when John, the technical support in the phonetics lab, pronounced it differently than i do. i used to say it "dee-bee-an", but he, by pronouncing it debby-an, made me think about whether i said it like most other users of the software. i looked it up (on the internet), and lo and behold i had been saying it differently than the authors and the majority of users. so the last couple weeks i've been changing how i've said that too.

this whole topic of pronunciation of words made me think of pronunciation differences between members of the same "dialect". is it because of some processing rules that made me process the word "debian" and "linux" both with long vowels? i don't think it's because of the vowels being between a stop and an nasal (respectively), or else why are there words like "debit" and "finish" with vowels that are short? anyway, maybe i need to look at cases where the pattern IS the same, and then worry about how to resolve any differences. but for now, i'm off to program ;)

[1] i initially tried to run it on an 8088 (ELKS) , but i never was quite successful. i then persuaded my dad to let me run it on his computer, and the rest is history.

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