Re: [libreoffice-users] Pronunciation of LibreOffice in English

At 09:33 05/05/2011 -0700, George[s] Rodier wrote:
> As a Canadian I recently attended LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, 
> WA. It was a great event and LibreOffice was well represented there. 
> All went well until I heard some folk calling it LeeBRAY-office. 
> Ouch! Please, there is NO accent on the final letter in 'libre'- so 
> no braying, eh?

Ouch indeed!

> To my ears 'LEEbruh' would be close (Lee as in Bruce Lee or even 
> Robert E. Lee and 'bruh' like the first syllable of brother in American).

And your Canadian ears should be respected, I say.

At 17:54 08/05/2011 +1000, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> It's in the FAQs: 
> http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/how-do-you-pronounce-libreoffice/

Aaargh!  But this makes no sense.

One of the first things to do in choosing a name to be used by the 
general public - along with making sure it is not already a trade 
name and that it doesn't mean something unfortunate in some language 
or other - is that speakers of all relevant languages will easily 
determine its pronunciation accurately and identically.  OK, so 
LibreOffice has failed at the first hurdle, but it's too late to rectify that.

Failing that, yes: there needs to be an accepted pronunciation 
clearly explained somewhere.  But the FAQ lets us down there too: it 
asks the question but fails to offer an answer!  Instead, it meekly 
says "If you want to hear" something else, here's how to get 
there.  And I'm sorry, but what it offers makes no sense at 
all.  First "LibreOffice is offered to Google Translate as a French 
word to be translated into English.  Since it isn't a French word at 
all, Google Translate understandably fails and merely reproduces the 
original - exactly as it should for a proper name.  (So why even 
point to that process in the FAQ?)  Clicking the "Listen" button then 
merely asks Google Translate to try to read "LibreOffice" as an 
English word.  But it's not an English word either, and the result is 
merely an attempt to render that string of letters as if it were!

The FAQ needs to have the definitive answer, not this mess.  As it 
explains, the "Libre" part of the name is French or Spanish.  The 
proper pronunciation needs at least to respect this choice and come 
up with something that approximates the French or Spanish 
word.  Doesn't that mean that "Li" part has to be LEE (not LIE) and 
"bre" has to be BRUH or BREE (not BRAY)?  (I read it as BRUH, but 
that's because I am marginally more familiar with French than with Spanish.)

Brian Barker


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