With arXiv I mind less for some reason, but I pronounce TeX and LaTeX as teks and lay-teks because:
- That’s how I pronounced them when I first read them.
- That’s how everyone else pronounces them when they first read them until someone who has heard this factoid corrects them.
- They look exactly like commonly-used English words.
- It feels like a dumb prank to take the name of a writing system, whose sole purpose is written word and which will be most discussed in written media, and give it a deliberately odd pronunciation that people don’t usually discover until they talk to someone about it.
I’m grateful to the legendary folks who built these things, but I still wish they would’ve honored the Least Surprise Principle and picked better names.
Not to say I disagree with you at all, but everything you say here applies to GNU.... (Well, maybe it's not so common a word, but it's still a written word for something that you're supposed to pronounce it unlike the English word it resembles.)
- That’s how I pronounced them when I first read them.
- That’s how everyone else pronounces them when they first read them until someone who has heard this factoid corrects them.
- They look exactly like commonly-used English words.
- It feels like a dumb prank to take the name of a writing system, whose sole purpose is written word and which will be most discussed in written media, and give it a deliberately odd pronunciation that people don’t usually discover until they talk to someone about it.
I’m grateful to the legendary folks who built these things, but I still wish they would’ve honored the Least Surprise Principle and picked better names.