English is stupid, but how does “latex” get a “k” ending? I have heard people arguing for years that it’s supposed to be pronounced that way, but never any justification for why.
The greek χ should be a “ch” sound like “Bach” or “Loch”. And if you copy that last character from the project page or anything it’s definitely an X, not a χ.
Indeed, “CH” like “Bach” or “loch” is an accepted pronunciation of LaTeX. We didn’t have unicode in the 1980s and LaTeX is a logotype so it doesn’t really get to evolve.
If by “latex” you mean \LaTeX, then that is impossible. Incidentally, it may interest you to know that the English alphabet does not map directly to phonemes or allophones. Sadly, you cannot know how a word is pronounced by looking at the letters that compose it. Isn’t that wild?
Among the lovely revival of arguing the One True Pronunciation, I personally see lay-tech as a portmanteau of “layout technology”. Meaning in German discourse, it’s [tɛç], and in English [tɛk]. Simple to remember, easy to derive, and matching the Gospel.
Except that it’s spelled “Latex” with all letters from the English alphabet and there is already an existing word with that spelling, therefore it is pronounced the same way as that word. You don’t pronounce “Laser” as “Lah Seer” even though the “A” comes from “Amplification” and the “E” from “Emission”. Once it became a word, it was pronounced using standard English pronunciation rules.
English is stupid, but how does “latex” get a “k” ending? I have heard people arguing for years that it’s supposed to be pronounced that way, but never any justification for why.
Because it’s not an X at the end, it’s a Greek chi. Same with the arXiv preprint distribution — it’s “archive,” not are-ex-iv.
The greek χ should be a “ch” sound like “Bach” or “Loch”. And if you copy that last character from the project page or anything it’s definitely an X, not a χ.
Indeed, “CH” like “Bach” or “loch” is an accepted pronunciation of LaTeX. We didn’t have unicode in the 1980s and LaTeX is a logotype so it doesn’t really get to evolve.
Meh, it’s pronounced Latex. I’ve chosen my hill to die on. Pretending it’s a “k” or “ch” sound is dumb.
You can mispronounce any word you like.
Yeah, but I prefer to pronounce latex properly, just like the rubber.
If by “latex” you mean
\LaTeX, then that is impossible. Incidentally, it may interest you to know that the English alphabet does not map directly to phonemes or allophones. Sadly, you cannot know how a word is pronounced by looking at the letters that compose it. Isn’t that wild?Nah, just LaTeX, the typesetting system. The one named entirely in characters from the English alphabet, named after the polymer emulsion.
Petition to change the name to RX4
99 what you did there…
(I know, IC isn’t valid Roman numeral representation of 99, but it was the only joke I could think of.)
From another comment:
Among the lovely revival of arguing the One True Pronunciation, I personally see lay-tech as a portmanteau of “layout technology”. Meaning in German discourse, it’s
[tɛç], and in English[tɛk]. Simple to remember, easy to derive, and matching the Gospel.Except that it’s spelled “Latex” with all letters from the English alphabet and there is already an existing word with that spelling, therefore it is pronounced the same way as that word. You don’t pronounce “Laser” as “Lah Seer” even though the “A” comes from “Amplification” and the “E” from “Emission”. Once it became a word, it was pronounced using standard English pronunciation rules.
Latex, like the rubber stuff.
“Read the instructions”, he was told, so he read them. And then he did lead Sean to the lead pipe.
Lol. Lmao even.