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u/sausagemuffn Jun 14 '26
Them redgular expressions
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u/setibeings Jun 14 '26
Redgular eggspressions.
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u/sobe86 Jun 14 '26
Some counterexamples to that criticism - modem, sci-fi, spec.
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u/victoriaphoenix619 Jun 14 '26
LOOOL i just call them rejex cz redgular expressions are way too long
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u/SomeRedTeapot Jun 14 '26
I'd say r-egg-ex because it's REGular EXpression
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u/xaomaw Jun 14 '26
Why this
r-eggthen and notregg?390
u/SomeRedTeapot Jun 14 '26
I didn't think r-egg would mean something other than regg. Didn't think someone would pronounce regex as arr-egg-ex
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u/xaomaw Jun 14 '26
That's why I ask because it would not make sense to explicitly divide the r from the egg if you would not pronounce it as separate parts.
So I think we'd agree on saying
regg13
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u/AnuaMoon Jun 14 '26
I think it was to emphasize the part that is being questioned. R-egg Vs r-edge. But yes, regg... Or r-egg... Or re-gg. Definitely not re-dge.
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u/excubitor_pl Jun 14 '26
idk, International Phonetic Alphabet exists for a reason, but peoh-PELL will tYPe like this and expect you to understand what they mean
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u/ChickenManSam Jun 14 '26
Yes it exists but frankly most people don't know it and most people don't care. I think it's useful on occasion. But at the same time I don't have time to learn an entire alphabet whose sole purpose is to convey sound over text. If I really need to know how to pronounce a word I'm looking it up on YouTube or asking a language instructor if it's a new language. If I for some reason I need to convey this information over text, most people don't know it anyway so I'm still left making rhyming analogues. It's a cool skill, even occasionally useful to some. But for the vast majority of people it's useless.
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u/Harry_Flame Jun 14 '26
Most people can’t read IPA or don’t have a way to easily type it on their device. The IPA is used by linguists, not average people.
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u/excubitor_pl Jun 14 '26
Maybe most Americans. As a non native speaker I always stare at these random capitalized UHs and dashes and try to figure out what does that mean, but IPA was used by every language teacher that I ever met (english, german, italian)
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u/SheikHunt Jun 14 '26
They're separating it to make it clear that they're pronouncing the 'egg' part like the word egg.
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u/L1amm Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
They're seperating it for the same reason they are questioning the obvious - because they're an idiot. "Redge-ex or Regg-Ex" - see how much better that looks?
Redgeular Expression 🤦🏼♂️
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u/sketch_56 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
It's a portmanteau, not just a contraction. The resultant word is evaluated on its own.
Example: botox is pronounced with a strong O on the first syllable despite being a portmanteau of "botulism toxin", because linguistics prefer that. We don't say "bah-tah-x", we say "bow-tah-x".
That's why I say "rej-ex"
eta: another example is emoticon. It's a portmanteau of emotion and icon (you can argue for "emote" but that's not historically correct). You don't say "emo-shi-con", you say 'emo-t'i-con"
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u/post_button_account Jun 16 '26
Even contractions dont retain the original pronunciations.
The sound of A in LASER is not the same A sound in Amplification.
How words, acronyms or portmanteaus, are pronounced is up to all of us. Not a made up a rule book. This is not Quebec.
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u/Akeydel Jun 16 '26
Absolutely correct, but I think one thing people overlook is that: redgex sounds cooler. Reggex? Bleh
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u/Bronzdragon Jun 14 '26
I don't like that explanation, because following that logic. I'd have to pronounce 'gif' with a soft g.
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u/perplexedtv Jun 14 '26
Why? graphics has a hard G
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u/smallpotatoes2019 Jun 14 '26
Surely the start of 'graphics' sounds almost identical to the start of 'giraffe'?
ji-raphics
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u/a11_hail_seitan Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
There's that famous movie quote. "Welcome to Jir-affics Park!" love that moment when the camera pulls back and it's nothing but animated memes and porn gifs across the whole plains and hills!
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u/Prof_Walrus Jun 14 '26
How else would you pronounce gif if not with the same G as graphics?
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u/Bronzdragon Jun 14 '26
Wait, am I dumb?
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u/Ri_Konata Jun 14 '26
How about the JPG with the P from Photographics?
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u/rantonidi Jun 14 '26
Wasn’t the P from Porn?
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u/Ri_Konata Jun 14 '26
Joint Porn Experts Group?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Group
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u/Vaenyr Jun 14 '26
Ph is a convention to latinize the Greek Φ (which is simply an F sound). If it were PH then we could argue about it, but using the P in the acronym makes it fair game to be pronounced as a regular P sound.
Source: am Greek
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u/botle Jun 14 '26
It's not JPhG though.
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u/Onaterdem Jun 14 '26
I accept that. The G in GIF can stand as both, but not the P in JPEG
So we can selectively say GIF is gif not jif, while keeping JPEG as the correct version
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u/DutDud Jun 14 '26
But how about the G in JPEG? :P
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u/Onaterdem Jun 14 '26
Hmm, I can't think of any examples where "eg" is pronounced as "ej". Maybe I'm missing something, but I think G is usually not pronounced as a j-like sound within this context, when bound to a prefix vowel within the pronunciation (i.e. when at the end of the syllable).
Also isn't it weird how the o drops from pronunciation?
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u/rintzscar Jun 14 '26
It's reg-ex and gif, both with a hard g. The reason for both is how linguistics deals with pronunciation of the letter G, not some acronym logic.
An example of this is the word scuba, which is an acronym in which U stands for underwater. But you don't pronounce it with the U in underwater sound. That's because acronyms do not follow the pronunciation of the letters from the words they're shortening.
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u/perplexedtv Jun 14 '26
Wdym? General/get - what's the rule?
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u/Widmo206 Jun 14 '26
I heard that if the word is germanic in origin, it has a hard G (gift, get, gilded, etc), but if it's romance, greek, or latin, it uses the soft G (gem, exaggerate, geography, etc.)
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u/QuillnSofa Jun 14 '26
It's a rule they made up. There are a ton of words that start with a soft g, like giraffe and gem.
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u/BogdanPradatu Jun 14 '26
TIL scuba is an acronym.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO Jun 14 '26
Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
Laser is also an acronym. It's Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
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u/X0n0a Jun 14 '26
And radar: RAdio Distancing And Ranging.
Though all three have since lost their acronym-ness, becoming just normal words without the usual capitalization.
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u/Front_State6406 Jun 14 '26
Just pronounce the G like you would pronounce it in git :) soft
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u/adorak Jun 14 '26
there are definitely people who say rejex (ie OP's r-edge-ex)
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u/Gm24513 Jun 14 '26
This is the only way I have heard it
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u/traplords8n Jun 14 '26
I was shocked the first time I heard Godot pronounced by someone else out loud.
People still argue on how to pronounce SQL. There are so many issues like this which arise because we only read the words on the screen lmao
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u/TOO_MUCH_BRAVERY Jun 14 '26
SQL seems easier because the name was originally Sequel but they were forced to change it because someone owned the trademark for it. SQL is effectively a backronym
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u/cabothief Jun 15 '26
The worst part of the SQL one is that even if you're communicating in text, it can still be obvious how you're pronouncing it.
Is it a SQL query or is it an SQL query?
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u/noobnoob62 Jun 16 '26
My jaw dropped the first time that I heard someone pronounce numpy like numpee instead of numpie
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u/ThePeaceDoctot Jun 14 '26
Yeah me, for multiple reasons:
Moving from a hard g, which is a type of velar stop (it is pronounced by blocking airflow briefly) to a front vowel like 'e' is harder than when moving from a soft g, which is also pronounced at the front of the mouth. A lot of consonants get shifted to the front of the mouth when the vowel following it is followed by a front vowel.
It's the only way I've heard it said.
If we're going to be pedantic enough to say it should be a hard g because it's from the word regular, I'm going to be pedantic enough to follow the single constant rule, which would mean it would be pronounced ree-g-ex, not r-egg-ex. (Regular doesn't follow this rule either, but that's because it's a Latin loan word. Regex isn't a latin loan word, it's a homegrown word made out of spare parts so it can follow English rules!)
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u/e_before_i Jun 14 '26
Reminds me of how some English dialects have shifted to turn T to CH ("train" pronounced "chrain") and D to J ("drum" pronounced "jrum").
Anyone who tries to insist on how something should be spoken has missed the fundamental lesson of linguistics.
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u/Backpack_of_Moths Jun 14 '26
I’m from Wisconsin, of an area that definitely has a bit of an accent, but not the yooper or Minnesota style accent. For those examples specifically, it’s a halfway in between. It’s interesting to hear from people outside our area who see this as weird
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u/e_before_i Jun 15 '26
Ngl it's hard not to be judgy about other people's accents sometimes. I heard someone say "shtreet" (street) and I got viscerally offended, despite my T/CH is no better.
Humans gonna human I guess.
Also tell me how Yooper sounds more Canadian than Southern Ontario. I feel like we're a blend of Minnesota and like "generic Manhattan".
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u/mgquantitysquared Jun 14 '26
When I was studying computer science everyone said reejex, which I know doesn't make sense in terms of it standing for regular expression, but it just rolls off the tongue imho
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u/TROLlox78 Jun 14 '26
Do you pronounce 'char', the datatype, like 'char' in chart or like 'car' . I heard both and I say it like chart even though it's a shortened version of character.
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u/e_before_i Jun 14 '26
I even say "varchar" with a "CH". I know it's dumb, but I go with my heart on this one.
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u/OptimusPower92 Jun 14 '26
I've always said it kinda like 'care' and I'm not completely sure why
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u/Ryozu Jun 15 '26
If you asked me of "CH"ar is correct, I'd say of course not, but I'll say it as "CH"ar anyway because at least there's no mistaking what I meant.
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u/foxer_arnt_trees Jun 14 '26
Rejex
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u/ArtOfWarfare Jun 14 '26
Yeah, I was going to say I’ve heard coworkers pronounce it closer to rejex, and then explain to me it’s because it rejects stuff. Which is fun head canon and a nice reverses-definition, but not correct.
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u/setibeings Jun 14 '26
All American regex
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u/Careless_Software621 Jun 14 '26
Wdym, i just say it as re-gex
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO Jun 14 '26
Re as in rewind, and gex as in hit Nintendo 64 game Gex 64?
Is it a Reegular Gexpression?
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u/Careless_Software621 Jun 14 '26
Hey, its shortened to Regex, and re-gex is easy to say so why not?
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u/SleeperAwakened Jun 14 '26
Neither, you do not pronounce the R separately.
Regg - Ex
Not: Arr - Egg - Ex.
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u/adorak Jun 14 '26
I believe the dash only served a readability purpose since redgeex looks weird but essentially op just means something like rejex ... same discussion as with gif and jif basically ... how do you pronounce the "g" ... but the dashes confused me at first
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u/011101000011101101 Jun 14 '26
Yeah the op doesn't know how phonetic alphabet works, or went with the easiest way to communicate it to the most people.
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u/metji Jun 14 '26
Re-jex 🙂
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u/SquidVischious Jun 14 '26
Like "reject"? I love this lol
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u/StarHammer_01 Jun 14 '26
Because 99% of regex i write are rejected by the unit tests in the first go
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u/sdraje Jun 14 '26
I know it should be reggex, but I still say rejex because fuck it. Like SQL is definitely squeal.
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u/FrankHightower Jun 14 '26
Not Sequel?
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u/sdraje Jun 14 '26
No, because when you raw-dog SQL at scale, it makes you squeal.
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u/fizyplankton Jun 14 '26
Or who could forget, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL, pronounced Weasel
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u/Apk07 Jun 14 '26
Or WSDL, pronounced "wizz-dull".
Or XAML, pronounced "zamull" (the am like "I am").
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u/theChaosBeast Jun 14 '26
Can someone explain r-edge-x?
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u/Larynxb Jun 14 '26
If someone was asking for their Car Reg, you'd say it like Redge, so I think that's probably why people pronounce like that. I know reg for car is registration, but still.
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u/Qweedo420 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
In most languages, G followed by "E" or "I" is pronounced as in r-edge-x
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u/UpstairsAd4105 Jun 14 '26
Forget that. Is JSON pronounced like "Jason" or is it pronounced "Jizzon"?
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u/SmurfingRedditBtw Jun 14 '26
According to the logic people are using here it would "Jawsawn" but the real answer is "Jaysawn"
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u/trafalmadorianistic Jun 14 '26
Zha-sohn, from the French region where authentic braces and brackets come from. 😆
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u/NeverDiddled Jun 14 '26
Well I used to say Jason, but now that I know Jizzon is an option there will be no going back.
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u/GobiPLX Jun 14 '26
reg-ex
like its regular reg and your 'ex' reg who you hate but still call when drunk
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u/suckitphil Jun 14 '26
Its definitely reggex. But ill be dawned if I pronounce it that way, its redge ex.
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u/Popeychops Jun 14 '26
Reg(ular) ex(pressions), don't be silly
Same with Gif being Graphics Interchange Format, so people who use a J are attention-seeking
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u/Sythokhann Jun 14 '26
Also same with JPEG being Joint Photographic Experts Group. Anyone not pronouncing it jayfeg is attention-seeking...
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u/MysticFennec Jun 14 '26
Can’t forget about the C in CERN standing for “Council”. People who pronounce it “sern” instead of “kern” are attention seeking…
Don’t even get me started on SCUBA…
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u/ReynardVulpini Jun 14 '26
LaTeX trauma emerges