Well, I although the stuff is pretty much offtopic, as the discussion did
not stop, so here I am again.
On Sat, 01 Sep 2001 wrote John O'Gorman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Allen Rae wrote
>
> > Have you never heard of people inventing new words?
> > Small businesses do it all the time. Name like "Kwik Kopy". Neither is a
> > real word. Neither would submit to your analysis. So why can't we
> > engineers and computer scientists also invent new words like LyX?
>
> Kwik and Kopy are not new words. They are orthograhic variants of
> existing
> words Quick and Copy. Quick is Gernanic and Copy Latin. Neither is an
> instance of our difficulty in determining the provenance of the letter X
> in LaTeX and LyX.
>
> We engineers and computer scientist, as educated people, would not flout
> established linguistic conventions to invent meaningless or stupid
> neologisms. Words have a form which conveys their cultural and historic
> ambience (unless advertising men or barbarians are involved in the
> process).
> Typically, learned neologisms are well-founded on root lexemes of
> European
> languages (mostly Latin or Greek).
Although TEX = tech on itself is not a lexem but an acronym of the root
techni-. (like in the Russian GOSAGROTEXEXPORT - a neologism made up in the
same "non-linguistic" way as KOLXOS for collective enterprise).
Even further, does there exist any greek word that has a chi at the end?
(Latex (=rubber) is neither greek, nor is the x a chi)
(What does Mr. Russell say?)
On the other hand, also among computer scientists the invention of orthographic
variants is common use. Besides the famous unics -> unix (which probabely
started it all) there is the family of k-something from the KDE (Konqueror,
Krabber, Kleandisk,...). All preserve the pronounciation, as does lyrics ->
lyrix (if the x is an ex and not a chi).
> So I stick to my contention that LyX is pronounced as the lych in
> polychromatic.
This example is a bit problematic, as one would have to chop phonems out of
their embedding into syllabels. Poly-chromatic (multi-colored) is actually a
compound i.e. the ch is not at the end but at the beginning of a word which
makes a difference. (even Germans would say [polikromatisch] but the German
or Scotish Loch = [loch] (or [lokh], just to make clear it is not [lok]))
> I am not arguing against the right of the word LyX to exist. I am merely
> explaining
> why it is obvious that it is consistent with its historic and cultural
> commections
> with LaTeX (pronounced Lah-teck) and honours the same convention of
> using X to
> transliterate the Greek letter CHI.
And I still argue, that it is not as obvious, as there is not one single
connection to (La)TeX, but an embedding in a semantic field of TeX, Unix,
Linux and X-Windows.
> > Russell (Allan's secret weapon):
> > With made up words English conventions can be flouted because the
> > structures no longer represent the written equivalent of the
> > spoken language but rather code words for new constructs.
> > The pronunciation however still has to obey the conventions.
> > Words in -X must be pronounced -ks.
>
> Where did your linguist get the above rule
Well, at least Mr. Russel did not know that Mr. Knuth invented his own rule
by stating that TeX should be pronounced as tau epsilon chi - which is
fair for a selfconstructed word but took years for the average people to
understand. (And it is not really conventional: if it were not for my beloved
TeX and its author, I'd say it's a spleen.)
>
> TeX is pronounced tek (probably [better: accurately GM] with a bit of gargle and
>aspiration)
> but definitely
> not tex as in Texas. Knuth spelt the X in uppercase and said that it
> was tau, epsilon, chi.
Actually, he spelt it all uppercase TEX, the minor e is just ASCII-art for the
halfway down capital Epsilon. Therefore, there is an ambiguity, as all
letters happen to be in both latin and greek alphabets. This ambiguity is
solved by D. Knuths statement that it is to be read as Tau Epsilon Chi.
The use of Greek words in Latin text is common among e.g. theological texts
as is the use of Greec letters in mathematics. There is however a
convention, not to mix the alphabets in one word - or if so (in compounds),
to use a hyphen.
(Ok, compounds like LaTeX or BibTeX dont use a hyphen, still they quote the
entire TeX - so they are compounds also rather than simple words.)
For LyX, we have a different situation:, the L is clearly not greek,
the y, (although of greek origin) is part of the latin alphabet and the X is
open to dispute: if meant as chi, this would imply the mix of alphabets in
just one syllable, if meant as ex (= greek xi) it should be pronounced [ks].
We miss a statement from the original author. (Althought I believe to
remember a statement telling that LyX is pronounced "normal", not Lych as
Tech.) However, the mailing of the actual maintainer LGB clearly says
lyx=lycks (and the American transcription of his recording became licks).
> Either The X in LyX indicates LyX's association with LaTeX where the
> X is a pretend CHI
where it would be a singular example of quoting the whole TeX
> or The X in LyX is the only known instance of a final X suggesting a
> connection with X-Window.
Becouse it is an X-Window GUI to (La)TeX - i.e. something connected to both,
X-Windows and TeX.
> Which is more plausible?
lyrics -> lyrix -> LyX (el ypsilon ex) a la unics -> unix (resembling Asterix)
with strange capitalization (as in many variable or function names (GotoX,
GotoY) or in feminist German texts (StudentInnen)) as "visual connection"
(LGB)
or
lyrics + TeX -> LyX (with a mix of latin and greek letters in one syllable!)
I vote for the first.
Guenter
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
