How do you tell a wizard?

Joseph Francis joe at gryphon.COM
Tue Oct 24 21:55:36 AEST 1989


I, personally, vacillate between pronouncing 'vi' as the beginning of
'view' (can sound like vyeeeeh) with an occasional hard click at the end
for the 'yuk' effect, and 'vi' as in 'novice' (really, now quite
untypeable in sound, a definite potiential Heimlich candidate gurgle). 
How strangely appropriate the synonym (oops, 'homonym') 'vie' (rhymes
with 'blygh') exists, along with 'vee-eye', though 'vee-eye' makes it
sound both frivolous (remember how 'teco' was strangely onomatopoeic
w.r.t the clattering escape keys: and its derivative rhumba 'tico-tico'
(sic) immortalized by hordes of aging would-be musicians with hammond
organs at country-fair beauty shows while the judges ponder the
inevitable...) and strangely hardboiled, like j.d.  or p.i.  I digress:
vi is, of course, invoked rather than pronounced (like comparing apples
and oranges) but only by afficionados, the domain of invocational
wizards.  Entropy rears its head, however, and from the (larger) hell of
dysphonious commands possible comes 'emacs' (pronounces 'M-acks', like
the auntie em from 'The Wizard of Oz') gender neutral but available in
'shemacs' and 'hemacs' versions for M.O.T.A.S, being 'extensible'
(visions of which apropos the sentence context I leave to the imagination
of the reader).
-- 
joe at gryphon		...!elroy!gryphon!joe	
but jojo to my beeeest frieeeends.



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