Don't quite know exactly how to pronounce SUSE? We've got you covered....Broadway musical style. Singer: Christian BusathSchool age boy: Liam TharpLyrics a...
I always thought those whoe said susa instead of soos are wrong.
I have a rule about acronyms: if the spelling makes sense to be said as a word, I follow the English grammatical rules. A word that's spelled s-u-s-e would be pronounced "soos", so that's what I say.
This is why I don't pronounce GNU as "ga-noo", it doesn't make sense as a word. In those cases, I just spell them out.
From the UK I learned it as nome, but the gn is sounded like ng in ing endings rather than n like no. the difference is slight. n As in no is front of tongue on teeth and (g)ng is a back of the throat and nasal NG sound. When I hear people pronounce as two syllables guh-nome it sounds weird.
Technically there are initialisms which cannot be pronounced ( letters only ) and acronyms which can be pronounced ( form words ).
So, in general, your rule is a good one. Of course, that does nothing to solve the problem of HOW to pronounce the words when so many different origin cultures are at play. As other have said, SUSE is German. So, is following “English grammatical rules” the right take?
I do not really have an answer. It is not self-evident to me. For Linux, Linus himself seems to have defaulted to US pronunciation. There is some precedent there I suppose.
So what's the deal with GNU? When I first saw it, I was sure the G was silent, or formed a dipthong, like gnat or gnocchi or gnaw or gnarly or gnome or just any word starting with gn in English. But IRL, I've only heard it pronounced with a hard G, same with Gnome.
Well thats the thing, generally if I see an acronym and have to ask myself how it would be pronounced as a word, by my rule I just spell it out.
For a great example of this (unrelated to FOSS), look at LGBTQIA+. Even though it's a mouthful to say each letter individually, no one wrestles it into "Leguhbuht'kwia plus", it just doesn't make sense and saying it that way would probably ellicit a dead stare from whoever heard it. Unless it's painfully simple to morph into a word or single syllable, I don't bother.
I'm not trying to say this is the right way, mind you. It's just the way that makes the most sense to me.
Except GNU is a great example of an acronym that is pronounceable. It's even in the dictionary. The GNU mascot is a gnu, in fact.
LGBTQIA+ is essentially unpronounceable, thus we treat it as an initialism. Not that that's a requirement, there are examples like VIP where even though we could pronounce it we pronounce each letter individually.