What's the correct pronunciation of "Selenium"?
SuzieB
me is pronouncing it to rhyme with millennium (se-LEN-ee-um) rather
than like the element, which is pronounced se-LEE-nee-um.
My question: How is the testing system "Selenium" supposed to be
pronounced, and if it's se-LEN-ee-um, why is it pronounced that way
instead of the way the element Selenium is pronounced? I'd like to
hear the answer from those who know why it was named Selenium to begin
with--not just how everyone around you pronounces it, because it's
possible for incorrect pronunciations to become popular.
I hate to have two different pronunciations for the same word--it's
going to make me pronounce it the wrong way in one or both contexts.
Thanks!
Tarun K
Selenium"
AFAIK it was named Selenium to alleviate Mercury (Winrunner)
poisoning!
Patrick might know better
~ T
David Burns
mispronouncing it at LTAC (GTAC 2006) and a lot of people go down that
route. A lot of people pronounce it like the elements pronunciation
but to be honest it doesn't really matter. I pronounce it the
incorrect way but people always know what I mean.
David Burns
http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/
darrell
On the other hand, there are very few people who are familiar with the
word selenium. When I first saw the word, I recognized that the 'se'
was a 'sa' sound. I was familiar with words that ended in 'ium'. So I
parsed the word as se-len-i-um. Pronounced this way I came up with sa-
len-ee-um. I was surprised to learn, when I looked the word up, that
is is actually pronounced sa-lee-nee-am.
Most people don't seem to think much about spelling, pronunciation,
meaning, et cetera. So it is not surprising that sa-len-ee-um has
become the prevalent pronunciation of the word. One could argue that
sa-len-ee-um is the test tool and sa-lee-nee-am is the chemical
element. ;)
Many will argue that the most important thing is that people
understand what you are talking about. I think it is a slippery slope
people are stepping onto. I relate it to bad driving. When I was a kid
most people came to a full stop at stop signs, stayed within the speed
limit, didn't drift between lanes, et cetera. Over the years I saw the
number of people who rolled through a stop sign increase. The number
of people who exceeded the speed limit increased. It is now at a
point, in my city, that when I come to a full stop at a stop sign I
actually have people hit the back of my car because they don't expect
ANYONE to come to a full stop. It took over 30 years for this to
happen and if it wasn't for my natural inclination to watch patterns
and trends, I wouldn't have noticed it. In the last two weeks (14
days) 18 pedestrians DIED at intersections. Why? Because we originally
had numerous safe guards in place and over the last 30 years everyone
has been getting lazy and letting them slip.
Now no one is going to die because of poor grammar but companies have
lost millions due to miscommunication. I remember when usenet was
still popular and text messaging was taking off. The younger
generation would post these 'text messages' rather than full
sentences. It quickly stopped because people like Rob Pike, Dennis
Ritchie, Brian Kernighan would ignore these posts. So if you wanted
the founders to respond, you wrote proper sentences.
Basically, if poor spelling and poor pronunciation aren't occasionally
kept in check, we might find a lot more miscommunication. It is
amazing how trivial things like this slowly become something serious.
Once you recognize it as serious, you are dealing with decades of work
to undo.
Just something to think about.
Darrell
P.S. Thanks for bring this up SuzieB.
SuzieB
question.
It is good to know that both pronunciations are in use, so that I
won't be alone if I want to pronounce it Se-LEE-nium. People already
think I'm weird, and they know I'm picky about language issues, so it
probably won't surprise anyone I work with.
Darrell, I especially appreciate your thoughtful reply. I know that I
think and care about things like grammar, punctuation, and
pronunciation more than most people, but it's nice to have company.
In fact, I belong to a "Grammar Police" e-mail list.
Cheers,
Suzie
JerraraJohn
language, is dynamic. As long as the intent is clear and everyone
understands what is being communicated it doesn't matter how words are
pronounced. Although I am no expert on grammar and language, I recall
hearing that there was no standardised spelling of words until about
300 years ago. Words were often written phonetically, so if people
pronounced words differrently they were spelled (or spelt)
differently.
bderman
>> question.
>>
>> It is good to know that both pronunciations are in use, so that I
>> won't be alone if I want to pronounce it Se-LEE-nium. People already
>> think I'm weird, and they know I'm picky about language issues, so it
>> probably won't surprise anyone I work with.
Merriam-Webster agrees with you, as well.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio-medlineplus.pl?seleni04=selenium
-Brad
Jason Huggins
> I'd like to
> hear the answer from those who know why it was named Selenium to begin
> with--not just how everyone around you pronounces it, because it's
> possible for incorrect pronunciations to become popular.
I named the project Selenium. Accidently.
The sequence of events went something like this:
I first called it "JavaScript Functional Tester" or "Jason's Snazzy
Functional Testing tool" or "JSFT" back when I was at ThoughtWorks in
Chicago around August, 2004. I wasn't too happy with the name JSFT,
but it did go somewhat with "JSUnit", a related library with a prosaic
name. "JSFT" started as a mash-up of Edward Hieatt's JSUnit and Ward
Cunningham's FIT.
Knowing that "JSFT" wasn't exactly a catchy name, fellow
ThoughtWorkers Paul Hammant and Bret Pettichord (of Watir fame) and I
had a few rounds of emails trying to come up with a better name.
Around this time, Aslak Hellesoy (creator of Cucumber, and a fellow
ThoughtWorker at the time) saw my demo and commented that JSFT "drove
the browser like a madman". I took that "madman driver" theme and
started to call the tool "Taxi Driver". That lasted a day or so. Next,
I dreamed up the name "CheckEngine" to be complementary to
ThoughtWorks' continuous integration tool, CruiseControl. I thought it
was the perfect pun: like a "check engine" on a car's dashboard *and*
an "engine" that "checks" websites.
A few days later, one ThoughtWorker saw JSFT and commented that we
could "kill Mercury" with this new tool. As a joke, I spent an hour or
two googling around for puns on the mercury name. I ended up googling
the phrase: "antidote for mercury poisoning", and found some website
that mentioned that Selenium supplements were the cure for mercury
poisoning.
So as a witty comeback, I replied to my collegue saying "Well, if we
want to 'kill mercury', maybe we should name it 'Selenium'" with a
link to the website I found. (
http://www.positivehealth.com/article-view.php?articleid=493 )
From then on, everyone just started calling it "Selenium". The funny
thing is, the rest of that "witty comeback" email listed all my
reasons why we should name the project "CheckEngine", but everyone
ignored those arguments apparently. :-)
- Jason Huggins
http://saucelabs.com
P.S. I pronouce it "Se-LEN-ee-um", which is the *incorrect*
pronunciation... It's /supposed/ to be pronounced "se-LEE-nee-um", but
I felt I'd sound like a pretentious British guy saying it the "proper"
way. Chock it up to American/British disputes over what English is
supposed to sound like. See: aluminum/aluminium. :-)