CIDR - What's the Correct Pronunciation

See I Dee Are? See-Dur? Cider? Si-der?

[martinibuster]

Pronunciations for these kinds of things seem to be kind of arbitrary. Why not Li-nux (like tux, pronounced like it's spelled)? Because in another language it's Li-nooks?

En-jinx seems right but it's really Engine-X because... well just because.

Let's not start with GIF.

Returning to CIDR? Is it See-der?

[martinibuster]

Should we have the right to pronounce things however we want?

[phranque]

i defer to the creator of the acronym for preferred pronunciation.

see: GIF

[lucy24]

Huh. I've always thought of it as C,I,D,R--and that’s speaking as someone who says “p’nig” and “an url”. (And it’s an image format, not a brand of peanut butter.)

We won’t talk about the recent infestation of biasees and processees, to say nothing of the prefix zoo-o.

Now, what’s the plural of mouse?

[not2easy]

I never tried to pronounce CIDR, it seemed to just be "C, I, D,R" if it needed saying.

[phranque]

according to wikipedia, the preferred pronunciations of CIDR and "cider" are identical:
saɪdər

(And it’s an image format, not a brand of peanut butter.)

and according to steve wilhite, he literally intended it to be a homophone for the peanut butter brand:
"choosy programmers choose GIF"

[lucy24]

according to wikipedia, the preferred pronunciations of CIDR and "cider" are identical:
saɪdər

How does one pronounce it in non-rhotic dialects? (Besides, in any dialect, schwa + /r/ is a phonetic fiction. It's one or the other.)

he literally intended it to be a homophone for the peanut butter brand

Oh, good grief. What a good thing we are in foo.

[tangor]

Just wondering how often CIDR comes up in polite conversation at birthday parties or on Halloween? I just read CIDR as "Classless Inter-Domain Routing" and get on with my day. :)

Of course, if I were in a different industry sector it might be:

Controlled Internal Drug Release
Center for Inherited Disease Research
Channel Identifier
Center for Instructional Development and Research
Central Identities Data Repository
Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting
Conference on Innovative Data systems Research
Cysrich Interdomain Region
Cysteine-rich Interdomain Region
Cellular Immunotherapy Data Resource
Camden Integrated Digital Record
Care Integrated Digital Record
Center for Infectious Disease

(Note: all above are real things. G told me so!)

[lucy24]

G told me so!

Pikers. abbreviations dot com lists sixteen.

[tangor]

Well... that sounds about right. I edited three out because they were "duplicates" with minor syllable differences. Adds up to sixteen.

So... how do we say "what difference does it make?" if we already know what CIDR means?

To me its been CID R (no intervening vowel necessary).

[ronin]

En-jinx seems right but it's really Engine-X because... well just because.

Well, at least someone who guessed En-jinx would reasonably close.

Never having heard anyone actually pronounce it, I read it as nuhgginks for years, being ignorant and knowing no better.

Let's not start with GIF.

I just looked this up and... I have... no... words.

Should we have the right to pronounce things however we want?

Absolutely. I would guess at least 90% of the UK population pronounces a well-known Spanish sausage ciorizzo... like it's from Italy.

Now, what’s the plural of mouse?

Mices. Or Meese.

[edited by: ronin at 9:42 pm (utc) on Sep 21, 2022]

[lucy24]

I like to read it as ŋinx with a nasal that English doesn't use syllable-initially--and which yes, I realize these Forums can't handle.

[tangor]

The plural of mouse is mice. Unfortunately jargon English has been used to describe a mouse as mice (singular) hence the confusion regarding the proper plural.

Mouses is corrected to speak of more than mouse. Mice, however, falls into the category of gaggle for geese, for example, though while there can gaggles there aren't any mices.

English gets messy from time to time.

As far as Nginx I figured if "gnu" was "nu" "nginx" was "jinxed" :)

(currently on an Ngnix serve for one site and very unhappy with the reporting I get in my access logs and, aparently after HOURS on phone with very nice support folks, can't get SSL reporting! Whodathunk?) Site works great, just can't track doodly.

[lucy24]

Mice, however, falls into the category of gaggle for geese

Eh? Gaggle isn't a plural, it's a venereal noun. I don't remember offhand what a group of mice is called, though I do know a group of rats is a mischief. Besides, the reference was to those boring old poops who speak of multiple computer mouses. (These are the same people who speak of the Roman emperor Gaius, sending you to the nearest reference work to establish that they mean Caligula.)

if "gnu" was "nu"

Only if you didn't grow up with languages that retain initial gn- and kn-. And, hm, do Italians pronounce it “nyoo”?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Abbreviations of a word should sound exactly like the word.
example: st. is pronounced street, ave. is pronounced avenue etc.

Acronyms are not words at all nor are they abbreviations. The letters F.D.A. for example, they stands for the Food and Drug Administration but saying the letters one after another is acceptable. Mushing them into a word isn't. For acronyms just say the letters.

If you want to get cute you can create a word out of the letters in an acronym but it's never an actual word in the sense it's being used. It might be a word with an entirely different meaning, but it's not being used as a word. When you see that done feel free to pronounce it however you want because it will be wrong.

Example - Care Package, Care makes sense as a word but it's origin in this use is C.A.R.E or CARE package, short for Cooperative for American Remittances, which coined the term during WWII. You can call them Coopar packages, if you feel like it. or Cam packages , The Coop did at first.

Pronounce them how you want, they aren't words! Have fun doing it too.

Fun fact: Some companies pay a lot of money to stop acronym sayings they don't like and some no longer bother trying. Example: My local repair shop tech works on Briggs and Stratton engines and his boss told him not to refer to them as B.S. engines so he took to calling them "Breaks and Scrap'em" engines for fun, and he likes them, it's a term of endearment.

[phranque]

you are confusing acronyms and initialisms.
acronyms are initialisms that are pronounced as a word, such as NASA, GIF, CIDR, etc.
initialisms that are not acronyms include FDA, FBI, ISP, DSN, etc

of course you may pronounce any series of letters as you wish, but it helps with communication when you use the common pronunciation.

ironically, TLA is not an acronym, it's a TLI.

[tangor]

On the radar CIDR seems laser focused, including sonar, to achieve a nadir---or zenith---of consensus.

[phranque]

RADAR and LASER are acronyms.
nadir and zenith are simply arabic words.
sonar as not an initialism, but was created as an analogue of radar.

[tangor]

And the fun of topic drift becomes more apparent with each post. :)

The op asked:

Returning to CIDR? Is it See-der?

And all are having fun in various.

I think we have too much time on our hands. :)

[lucy24]

RADAR and LASER are acronyms.

But eventually--though not nearly as often as folk etymology would have it--some acronyms become lexicalized and can be written lower-case, like snafu.

[ronin]

But eventually […] some acronyms become lexicalized and can be written lower-case, like snafu

Or Ajax.