Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 15:33:22 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: dmp@aracnet.com Cc: FreeBSD-newbies@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Name o' daemon? Message-ID: <19990828153309.J13904@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <37C779BC.16D1F090@aracnet.com>; from dmp@aracnet.com on Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 10:55:08PM -0700 References: <19990827013014.AE8C31559A@hub.freebsd.org> <37C74C4F.659542E4@aracnet.com> <19990828143751.H13904@freebie.lemis.com> <37C7722E.B13768AA@aracnet.com> <19990828145619.I13904@freebie.lemis.com> <37C779BC.16D1F090@aracnet.com>
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On Friday, 27 August 1999 at 22:55:08 -0700, dmp@aracnet.com wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> >> On Friday, 27 August 1999 at 22:22:54 -0700, dmp@aracnet.com wrote: >>> Greg Lehey wrote: >>>> On Friday, 27 August 1999 at 19:41:19 -0700, dmp@aracnet.com wrote: >>>>> Michael Henry wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Here's a snippet from one of Jordan Hubbard's recent posts to the >>>>>> -advocacy mailing list: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> P.S. Please don't call him "Chucky" anymore - it really offends Kirk >>>>>> and we don't need to do that. Just call him "the BSD daemon" or just >>>>>> "the daemon." Kirk says that he's not supposed to have a name anyway, >>>>>> and if he did, it would probably be "beastie" (not that I like that name >>>>>> much myself, so I just call him "the daemon", pronounced "day-mon"). >>>>> >>>>> I thought "daemon" was Latin? >>>> >>>> No, it's Greek, admittedly adapted into Latin spelling (see "The >>>> Complete FreeBSD" for the Greek spelling, which would be better >>>> rendered as "daimon". There's no evidence that it's pronounced >>>> differently from "demon". In ancient Greek it would presumably have >>>> been 'die-mon', and I think in modern Greek it's "dee-mon". >>> >>> Smooth book plug. :-) >>> >>> I'm a little rusty on my Greek, so I'll have to trust you on that >>> one I guess. But if it's adapted to Latin spelling, then it would >>> have to be pronounced die-mon, wouldn't it? >> >> That depends on your opinion about Latin pronunciation :-) I'd guess >> that in classical times each letter would have been pronounced >> separately (da-ey-mon). > > As I learned Latin, "da-ey-mon" isn't proper Latin grammar. Well, it's not grammar at all, it's pronunciation. > Syllable boundaries can only occur immediately before or between > consonants, not between vowels. Plus, "ae" is a diphthong, > pronounced as a single hard I sound, as in mile. That's what you learnt. What you learn about Latin pronunciation depends on where you learn it. English, French, German and Italian pronunciation of Latin are all completely different. > In English, however, "ae" is a hard A, as in cape. So in English, > it would be "day-mon" as Mr. Hubbard pronounced it, but daemon isn't > an English word. But then English is a bastard language, much to > its discredit. In English you can't rely on a sequence of letters to have any specific pronunciation. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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