this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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[–] dontsayaword@piefed.social 266 points 2 days ago (33 children)

and the g in gnu stands for gnu

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Yeah, they missed the best part.

GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, which is a recursive acronym. And, when pronounced properly (like the animal) the G is silent. The entire Linux ecosystem has words that start with G based on an acronym where G essentially comes from nowhere, and isn't actually pronounced.

[–] rocnat@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Well, I dont wanna start a debate, but the official website of GNU indicate that the "g" in GNU isn't silent.

So it depends on whether you want to pronounce it "properly" or as it was intended.

The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix!”; it is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g, like “grew” but with the letter n instead of r.

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.en.html

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, I dont wanna start a debate, but the official website of GNU indicate that the "g" in GNU isn't silent.

Yeah, but that's wrong. It's named after the animal, and the animal is pronounced without a G sound. I'm not going to mangle the pronunciation because they screwed up.

[–] anguo@piefed.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Depends on where you're from.

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