Thanks for the nice discussion, and the point of view.
I have always had the following point (English point of view though:)
I like "lyks" (sounds nice and "man on the street" may ask: What's Lyks??)
I like "lyke" (I like like... --umm did I stutter..? "Man on the street"
won't get much of what I say, eh?)
R
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guenter Milde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: Re: LyX
> Well, I although the stuff is pretty much offtopic, as the discussion did
> not stop, so here I am again.
>
> On Sat, 01 Sep 2001 wrote John O'Gorman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> > Allen Rae wrote
> >
> > > Have you never heard of people inventing new words?
> > > Small businesses do it all the time. Name like "Kwik Kopy". Neither
is a
> > > real word. Neither would submit to your analysis. So why can't we
> > > engineers and computer scientists also invent new words like LyX?
> >
> > Kwik and Kopy are not new words. They are orthograhic variants of
> > existing
> > words Quick and Copy. Quick is Gernanic and Copy Latin. Neither is an
> > instance of our difficulty in determining the provenance of the letter X
> > in LaTeX and LyX.
> >
> > We engineers and computer scientist, as educated people, would not flout
> > established linguistic conventions to invent meaningless or stupid
> > neologisms. Words have a form which conveys their cultural and historic
> > ambience (unless advertising men or barbarians are involved in the
> > process).
> > Typically, learned neologisms are well-founded on root lexemes of
> > European
> > languages (mostly Latin or Greek).
>
> Although TEX = tech on itself is not a lexem but an acronym of the root
> techni-. (like in the Russian GOSAGROTEXEXPORT - a neologism made up in
the
> same "non-linguistic" way as KOLXOS for collective enterprise).
>
> Even further, does there exist any greek word that has a chi at the end?
> (Latex (=rubber) is neither greek, nor is the x a chi)
> (What does Mr. Russell say?)
>
>
> On the other hand, also among computer scientists the invention of
orthographic
> variants is common use. Besides the famous unics -> unix (which probabely
> started it all) there is the family of k-something from the KDE
(Konqueror,
> Krabber, Kleandisk,...). All preserve the pronounciation, as does
lyrics ->
> lyrix (if the x is an ex and not a chi).
>
>
> > So I stick to my contention that LyX is pronounced as the lych in
> > polychromatic.
>
> This example is a bit problematic, as one would have to chop phonems out
of
> their embedding into syllabels. Poly-chromatic (multi-colored) is actually
a
> compound i.e. the ch is not at the end but at the beginning of a word
which
> makes a difference. (even Germans would say [polikromatisch] but the
German
> or Scotish Loch = [loch] (or [lokh], just to make clear it is not [lok]))
>
> > I am not arguing against the right of the word LyX to exist. I am merely
> > explaining
> > why it is obvious that it is consistent with its historic and cultural
> > commections
> > with LaTeX (pronounced Lah-teck) and honours the same convention of
> > using X to
> > transliterate the Greek letter CHI.
>
> And I still argue, that it is not as obvious, as there is not one single
> connection to (La)TeX, but an embedding in a semantic field of TeX, Unix,
> Linux and X-Windows.
>
> > > Russell (Allan's secret weapon):
> > > With made up words English conventions can be flouted because
the
> > > structures no longer represent the written equivalent of the
> > > spoken language but rather code words for new constructs.
> > > The pronunciation however still has to obey the conventions.
> > > Words in -X must be pronounced -ks.
> >
> > Where did your linguist get the above rule
>
> Well, at least Mr. Russel did not know that Mr. Knuth invented his own
rule
> by stating that TeX should be pronounced as tau epsilon chi - which is
> fair for a selfconstructed word but took years for the average people to
> understand. (And it is not really conventional: if it were not for my
beloved
> TeX and its author, I'd say it's a spleen.)
>
> >
> > TeX is pronounced tek (probably [better: accurately GM] with a bit of
gargle and aspiration)
> > but definitely
> > not tex as in Texas. Knuth spelt the X in uppercase and said that it
> > was tau, epsilon, chi.
>
> Actually, he spelt it all uppercase TEX, the minor e is just ASCII-art for
the
> halfway down capital Epsilon. Therefore, there is an ambiguity, as all
> letters happen to be in both latin and greek alphabets. This ambiguity is
> solved by D. Knuths statement that it is to be read as Tau Epsilon Chi.
>
> The use of Greek words in Latin text is common among e.g. theological
texts
> as is the use of Greec letters in mathematics. There is however a
> convention, not to mix the alphabets in one word - or if so (in
compounds),
> to use a hyphen.
> (Ok, compounds like LaTeX or BibTeX dont use a hyphen, still they quote
the
> entire TeX - so they are compounds also rather than simple words.)
>
> For LyX, we have a different situation:, the L is clearly not greek,
> the y, (although of greek origin) is part of the latin alphabet and the X
is
> open to dispute: if meant as chi, this would imply the mix of alphabets in
> just one syllable, if meant as ex (= greek xi) it should be pronounced
[ks].
>
> We miss a statement from the original author. (Althought I believe to
> remember a statement telling that LyX is pronounced "normal", not Lych as
> Tech.) However, the mailing of the actual maintainer LGB clearly says
> lyx=lycks (and the American transcription of his recording became licks).
>
> > Either The X in LyX indicates LyX's association with LaTeX where the
> > X is a pretend CHI
>
> where it would be a singular example of quoting the whole TeX
>
> > or The X in LyX is the only known instance of a final X suggesting a
> > connection with X-Window.
>
> Becouse it is an X-Window GUI to (La)TeX - i.e. something connected to
both,
> X-Windows and TeX.
>
> > Which is more plausible?
>
> lyrics -> lyrix -> LyX (el ypsilon ex) a la unics -> unix (resembling
Asterix)
>
> with strange capitalization (as in many variable or function names (GotoX,
> GotoY) or in feminist German texts (StudentInnen)) as "visual connection"
> (LGB)
>
> or
>
> lyrics + TeX -> LyX (with a mix of latin and greek letters in one
syllable!)
>
> I vote for the first.
>
> Guenter
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
