OS X: When Language And Geeks Collide

I'm a big language dork, and at least one of my fellow Homotronites feels the same strange passion about words (hi, Den Den) - so I know that philologists can get their manties in a bunch over anything from punctuation to pronunciation. And while I can't say that I'm truly surprised that there are tech folks who'll leave scathing comments about the pronunciation of "OS X," I sure do find it silly as all get-out.

Rich Brown over at Crave got more than an earful after his recent unboxing video of Psystar's Open Computer - not about the subject at hand, but rather his pronunciation of Apple's operating system: Rich erred fatally by pronouncing the title "Oh-Ess-Eks" rather than "Oh-Ess-Ten." I had no idea such a reserve of bile existed for this linguistic foible!

I routinely go back and forth between the two pronunciations - believing Chomsky when he debunked the notion of a universal grammar and heartily enjoying my own personal lexicon, replete with all of its idiosyncrasies and variety - but I do understand (and occasionally share) more stentorian opinions on words and how we use them.

Unfortunately, using a big ol' Roman numeral in its title makes OS X an excellent target for linguistic drift: not only are both pronunciations understandable, but modern usage of Roman numerals and their pronunciations are different than in the good old days of Henry VIII - witness the lack of those who read the words of "Malcom Ten" or listen to "DM-Ten." Or anyone who breaks a bone and gets a "ten-ray!"

Whatcha think? I'm with Brown, who's decided to embrace his individuality and "be the JIF to your GIF, the EARL to your URL, and the DUB-DUB-DUB to your WWW."

You go, boi.

Apple OS X: You say OS Ten, I say OS Eks [Crave]