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heelix

Oh noes. I'm one of those people who keep calling it that. What is the correct pronunciation?

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La(like law)-tech

> La(like law)-tech

That's definitely not how you pronounce LaTeX.

Wikipedia recommends LAH-tekh or LAY-tekh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJYBqvTllgY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQeXvwx6gE

I'd say "la (like law)-tech" is pretty much the same as "LAH-tekh", minus the indicated emphasis.

Guess it depends how you pronounce 'law' then ha! I can't start 'law' with 'lah' no matter how hard I try - 'lah-ore' maybe?

Ah, glancing at your profile I think you're hitting the traditional English problem of pronouncing letters which aren't there :) "To be forced to sawr into such rawr meat should be against the lawr"

It's nicely counterpointed by the other habit of not pronouncing letters which are there, like in Worchestershire.

Your accent exhibits the "cot-caught" merger, then. Those are two different sounds in most accents.

IPA is really needed here. When you wrote LAH I wasn't sure if you meant /lɑ/ or /læ/.

Likewise for "law": is it meant to be /lɑ/ or /lɔ/? It's not clear because the word is pronounced differently in different dialects.

For reference, Wikipedia recommends /ˈlɑtɛx/ and /ˈleɪtɛx/, and the two linked videos use /lə'tɛk/ and /ˈleɪtɛk/ respectively.

I’m baffled that IPA is ever needed. I’ve always preferred this style pro-nun-see-AYEE-shun.

What is lacks in perfect clarity it makes up for in instant readability.

How on earth could LAH be ambiguous now?

I always say latex just because it makes pedants grit their teeth, and then just for fun randomly pronounce it correctly. A lot of CS people need to learn to chill a bit.

Right, so whoever wrote the software decided to give it a name identical to an existing English word, but would then balk at it being 'mispronounced'? If the developer didn't care enough about avoiding confusion then why the hell should I?

Case-sensitive naming is dumb.

Yeah but in English, if everyone pronounces it wrong and you wait 100 years (now more like 20), it will become the default pronunciation via a special rule used by speakers and codified nowhere.

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