this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Curious, is anyone pronouncing them the same or does this only work in text?
I’ve not heard anyone pronounce them the same, but I don’t doubt they’re out there. Probably a decent overlap with the people who pronounce GIF like the peanut butter.
I guess I’m one of them. I’ve never used LaTeX, but I don’t know how else I’d pronounce that.
Lay-tech or Lah-tech is how I've been told it's pronounced, don't ask which one is correct, I don't know
IIRC its creator said it's Lay-tech
It's "Lay" because it's borrowed from / referencing "lay person" i.e. not a member of the (TeX) priesthood.
The last sound being one that afaik doesn't exist in English. It's like the j in jalapeño but waaay guttural. It's the Greek letter χ.
The tex there has the Greek letter chi instead of Latin x at the end and is supposed to be reminiscent of a Greek root from which we derived the word technique: techne or τέχνη. The tex there is just pronounced tech usually. The original intention I believe was for it to sound like the ch in loch or bach but that sound isn't seen in modern English(generally even in the examples I gave). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_fricative
For all the star Trek nerds: that's close to what the Klingon word gagh ends with. Gagh has a voiced uvular fricative, so just do the same without voice and just air and you'll get chi.
Not to be too pedantic, the modern Greek chi is a voiceless velar fricative (or in some cases a voiceless palatal fricative) rather than uvular. The velar location is the same place English pronounces the letter k, uvular is a bit further back, more like the French r. It's a little confusing because the IPA uses the chi symbol for the voiceless uvular fricative even though Greek doesn't pronounce it that way. In Klingon, the voiceless velar fricative is written as H (I believe gh is a voiced velar fricative rather than uvular as well). I think the uvular consonants are q and Q. Apologies if my pedantry was unwelcome
Hey I'm regularly wrong and don't mind being corrected.
Uvular fricative somehow reminds me of friction of the vulva.
They're nor related, are they?
Vulva or uvula?
Yes.
La-tech
The 'X' at the end of \LaTeX is actually a uppercase chi, so it pronounced with a 'k' sound.
It's actually a ch-sound, as in Bach. But Knuth also thinks the k-pronunciation is fine.
My PhD supervisor insisted it was "Law-tex"
That's how you can tell if someone is into latex (kink), they don't feel comfortable calling LaTeX (tech) by the same pronunciation around people.
It's pronounced yiff, right?
Yoosey mothers use yiff!
I call it 'Jif' and will defend it to the death, for no other reason than I think it's hilarious to have a very strong opinion on something so irrelevant. People get soo mad about it :D
I always like to point out that outside of the US, Jiff means drain cleaner, although maybe that's just a commentary on the quality of the peanut butter. Although frankly it doesn't make the acronym any less ridiculous.
The PB is spelled Jif, not Jiff.
The acronym isn't ridiculous, it's how the creator of the acronym pronounced it. People should be able to name their own babies.
Tell that to the SQL folks.
And yes, it's "sequel". And "gif" like "gift".
I did, they say they agree with me.
How do you pronounce Porsche? Do you say "Porsh" or "Por-shuh"?
What about Volkswagen? Is it Volks-wah-gen or Volks-vah-gun?
How about Hyundai? "Hun-Day" or "Hai-un-dai"?
If you look up the 'correct' way to pronounce them, I bet you will get a different answer to what you thought it was. Are the former pronunciations only correct in the U.S. but when you travel to Germany or South Korea they become incorrect?
Your argument is a descriptivist one, but how do you determine which is the 'right' pronunciation if both ways of pronouncing a thing are commonly used?
Interesting, so what do you think of the people in this thread who say that LaTeX is pronounced "Lay-tech"? Would the 'right' way to say it change if enough people started pronouncing it 'wrong'?
Por-shuh
Folks-vah-gun
Hun-dai (approximately)
Sequel
Mostly I was just joking around though, pronounce stuff however you want. I'm sure I mispronounce plenty of stuff. Ultimately if people understand each other, that's good enough
😉
I usually pronounce Volkswagen as "Vee-Double-You"
I say actually say Hyundai just like you around normies, but my bff and I have an In-joke where we call them "Hyun-uh-Die" because one time when she was on the phone with someone from the Insurance company, they corrected her pronunciation to that.
I actually love to mispronounce things on purpose, it might be why I chose "Jif" as my little hill to die on lol.
I sometimes do too lol. I lived in Germany for a while. So if we are working on a project together and get along well you might here me pronounce a tool like it's literally a German word (i.e. "knife" -> "kuh-NEE-fuh" lol)
If the vast majority is wrong it doesn't make them right.
Hyundai is correctly pronounced how the hell ever koreans pronounce it.
One not being korean, it's acceptable to approximate.
Sure, but who decides which one is right and which one is wrong? In the case of .Gif the people who made it said that it should be pronounced Jif, like the peanut butter, but a lot of people have an issue with that.
Koreans pronounce Hyundai as "Hai-un-dai", but if you say that or Volkswagen the 'right' way in America people look at you like you are crazy.
Ok, but it's not hard do say "Hai-un-dai", even though most Americans say "Hun-day", even in official TV commercials from Hyundai themselves.
In Japan they pronounce sandwich, like Sandoichi. Is it acceptable for them to approximate? Does it being acceptable equate to it being 'correct'?
These are all very questions.
So is it, go dot, god oh, or gu doh
It's 'Guh doh' I believe.
I disagree. I think persons should name themselves. But, I understand there are practicalities that require some name to be assigned by outsiders at least until the person can talk.
For things that aren't conscious or are incapable of speech, I think we collectively assign a name. I'm fine giving higher weight to the name chosen by the "creator" or "discover", but I'm not fine with giving them veto power / final cut.
Did you know Dr. Seuss name is actually pronounced more like Zoyce or Soice (rhymes with voice, not moose)? And he wanted people to pronounce it correctly?
I'm actually usually unconcerned by how people pronounce things, but I think taking a man's own name away goes a bit far.
I did know that. I don't recall pronouncing it incorrectly since learning that fact, but I don't talk about those books or their author frequently.
Oops, I worded that funky. I didn't mean to accuse you of doing that, just talking about people in general.
I just think it's an interesting fact.
Welcome to the internet, have a cookie.
I know how LaTeX is pronounced but I always read it the same as latex.
latex-project.org says "lah-tech" or "lay-tech"
Nah. I've said it like the English word in my head for decades. I'll keep doing it. Argle bargle.
It's like those 'kevinist' names where it sounds like 'taylor' but is spelled like 'wishbone' or something. Just. No.
(Hush, Ceilidh, I almost have a sound argument)
If you pronounce project like you pronounce latex, you could call it "latex projext".
The X is pronounced “tweet” apparently.
I've only heard LaTeX pronounced like latex in media where someone uses it to show what a geek some character is. eg, I've been typsetting my homework assignments in latex since I was 9.
I've never encountered that kind of LaTeX in media.
I've always pronounced it "Lah-tekh"
They're pronounced so differently my wife didn't get it until I informed her that LaTeX is how "latec" is spelled
Wait is the TeX not short for “text”? I’ve always pronounced them the same.
The "X" is the greek letter, pronounced like the ch in Bach. Knuth explains this in the TeXbook, think TeXnician, not TeXpert.
I’ve literally never heard anybody pronounce them differently, your comment confused me at first but TIL.