I say all three words.
Same here.
I just posted an essay about this in the “WHO” thread, here.
My ideas, in summary: An acronym (or initialism) works best when pronounced as a word, providing these conditions are met:
- It is easily pronounceable as a word (or at least can be contrived to be, as someone else has noted with the pronunciation of FNMA as Fannie Mae or SQL as sequel).
- All letters in the acronym are voiced in the pronounced word. WHO, for example, fails this test because the W is silent when pronounced as “who”. FAQ sort-of-fails this test because nobody is quite sure how the final Q should be pronounced so it sounds like Q.
- Helpful if the word has two or more syllables. WHO and FAQ fail this test too, as does UPS.
RADAR, AWACS, and OPEC (ETA: and even WYSIWYG) pass all these tests, and thus work very well when pronounced as words.
I say SQL as “sequel” (or occasionally “squill”), and MySQL is “My Sequel”, purists be damned, because it passes all MY ideas in the above rules. Still not sure how to say PostgreSQL though. (ETA: I tend to say it something like Post-Gress-Quell.)
ETA: And what about ETA? I think that’s best pronounced as the separate letters. Why? I guess it helps if the acronym is mostly consonants. Those that are mostly vowels seem to sound less distinct when pronounced as a word.
Almost always as F-A-Q except for gamefaqs which I pronounce as game-facts.
Thanks, now I feel a little less weird.
PS. How you doin’ friend of mine?
138 posters take crazy pills.
Like a word, but I don’t think I’ve ever said it in the singular, always as FAQs.
I find myself using both.
The same with SQL. Sometimes I say Ess Queue Ell, sometimes I say Sequel.
I will say the letters or say each word…
Pet peeve is people saying a-sap instead of a-s-a-p…
Neither.
In my head it’s “Fack” but I always say “Frequently Asked Questions” aloud.
I always think it’s funny that you find facts under the “fack” section but I’m easily entertained.
Same here.
I don’t understand what you mean here. Are you saying a word ending in “aq”, like Iraq, has an ambiguous pronunciation at the end? How else would you say it?
If you mean there could be multiple ways to say that hard K sound, then you later examples of OPEC and AWACS fail that as well, and those don’t confuse anyone.
No, the other way around. The pronunciation is clear, but the spelling (given the pronunciation) is ambiguous. Anyone hearing “fack” will, I think, more readily visualize it spelled with a C or K than a Q (because we aren’t accustomed to imagining a Q without a U after it).
Granted, OPEC and AWACS could be visualized with a K instead of a C, but nobody would think it Q.
Notice, BTW, I said FAQ “sort-of fails” that test. OTOH, pronouncing WHO as the word “who” fails worse because the W is lost completely. And does anybody pronounce OTOH as a word, where the H would be totally lost?
ETA: Okay, people fill in some vowels to get “Fannie Mae” from FNMA and “Sequel” from SQL. But how would you pronounce BTW?
Just as a note, and it may well speak to the level of nerdiness of who I hang out with, but I’ve NEVER, not ONCE, had anyone not understand what I meant when I said “FAQ” as “fack.”
I say “fock”
I’ve recently started thinking fah - Q :p:p:p
But if I were to say it out loud, I would say the whole thing:
“Frequently Asked Questions”
It depends on how internet-savvy the person I’m talking to is. If I think they’ll get it, I say “fack.” If I think they won’t (like my boss, for instance), it’s F-A-Q.
“FACK” is my preference.
Back when Spinal Tap had their website up, they had Frequently Unasked Questions…the line between stupid and clever gets thinner all the time…