Re: Two trivial questions

[John Gardner]

Initially, I pronounced it /ɡɹɔːf/
<http://ipa-reader.xyz/?text=%C9%A1%C9%B9%C9%94%CB%90f>. Recently, I've
begun pronouncing it /ˈdʒiːɹɒf/
<http://ipa-reader.xyz/?text=%C9%A1%C9%B9%C9%94%CB%90f>, though I sometimes
still mentally read it as the former.

IMHO, I think we should put our foot down and standardise Groff's
pronunciation in a man page somewhere. I'm willing to bet plenty of users
mispronounce "troff" as /tɹɒf/ <http://ipa-reader.xyz/?text=t%C9%B9%C9%92f>
(I used to be guilty of this myself).

 I'd further argue that the GNU roff project has indulged some puns that
> make the "jee-roff" pronunciation an unstable equilibrium that we might
> expect to fail.
>

The prefix these tools use isn't *"g-"*, but *"gro-"*; i.e., pronouncing
grops *"jee-rops"* only makes sense if there was a tool named "rops".

The surname "Groff", with which some unknown quantity of users will be
> familiar before they encounter our software, long predates computerized
> typesetting.
>

"Troff" is also a surname, albeit an uncommon one (see
https://unwsp.edu/bio/emma-troff/). Ergo, this argument doesn't have much
weight.


On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 at 17:04, G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> [post-quotation word count: 565]
>
> At 2021-10-26T23:44:15-0400, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 26, 2021, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > > > Is there a correct pronunciation of groff?
> > >
> > > Groff's forebears were christened en-roff and tee-roff, so an
> > > old-timer from Bell Labs instinctively reads groff as a disyllable.
> > > Could groff's originator, James Clark, have read it otherwise?
> >
> > So is it worth giving the established pronunciation in the videos'
> > comments, or should language be left to do its thing and evolve?
>
> I'm still the new guy here in a lot of ways, and I've found my own usage
> shifting erratically between the two.  When I first showed up I mentally
> pronounced it "groff" (the monosyllable) just like the philistines with
> their YouTube channels, and I still do sometimes, but when speaking
> aloud to others about this thing that I work on, I sometimes find myself
> deferring to the "accepted" pronunciation.
>
> The surname "Groff", with which some unknown quantity of users will be
> familiar before they encounter our software, long predates computerized
> typesetting.  To the misfortune of our Web search efforts, it is borne
> by a couple of actors, at least one of whom is pretty famous, at least
> among some demographic groups (say, his own age or younger).
>
> I'd further argue that the GNU roff project has indulged some puns that
> make the "jee-roff" pronunciation an unstable equilibrium that we might
> expect to fail.  We have groff-related tools, grog and the output
> drivers, all of which[1] _seem_ to pull in the other direction.
>
> "Grotty" and "grog" are (at least) semi-standard English words, the
> latter a term for rotgut whiskey (or a ration of rum allocated to scurvy
> tars), and they thereby encourage a similar morphological approach to
> "groff".
>
> Do the old-timers instinctively pronounce grops(1) "jee-roe-pee-ess"?
>
> I pronounce the "gro-" prefix on all of our output drivers as "grow",
> and except for "grotty", spell out the remaining letters since they're
> all initialisms anyway.
>
> My guess is that the momentum will prove to be away from the disyllable.
> Our attempts to resist this will meet a further difficulty: our attempts
> at issuing corrections in writing meet with the misfortune that both of
> the two most common ways of doing so stumble over ambiguous readings in
> English, just as the interjection "Geez!" (or "Jeez!") does.[2]  When we
> say "gee-roff", does the first syllable more closely resemble "ghee"
> (that one might cook Indian food with) or the unit of acceleration
> experienced in aerobatic maneuvers?  When we say "jee-roff", we may
> think ourselves on firmer ground, but for every jeering, jersey-clad,
> jejune jellybean-jerker in the world, there's a person coming from a
> background in the French, German, or Spanish languages, familiar with
> English's aggressive adoption of loan words, who may be left wondering
> if we're suggesting "zhee-roff" or "yee-roff" instead.
>
> Consequently, for all of my inclinations as a prescriptivist, I find
> myself leaving my watermarked pad in its locked drawer in this case.
>
> Let the YouTubers mispronounce, if that is in fact what they're doing.
> I appreciate the publicity they're giving our little project, and if in
> so doing they encourage more people to read our documentation and gain a
> better command of the practical _usage_ of groff, I confess I'll be
> pleased.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>
> [1] except for "gxditview", which doesn't encourage spoken pronunciation
>     even slightly
> [2] I use the latter because it's a minced oath for "Jesus Christ": in
>     popular (and characteristically hazy) notions of soteriology, even
>     such mincing brings one nonzero ignominy in the sight of the divine
>     Judge, Whose anger can evidently be mollified in proportion to one's
>     efforts at obfuscation, despite His perfect knowledge of one's
>     innermost heart.  Thus the popularity of the absurd rendering
>     starting with a "g", which itself begins a great many _other_ minced
>     oaths for the Name.  As Bart Simpson said, "well, you're damned if
>     you do, and you're damned if you don't".
>