How should it be pronounced?
I expect this to be one of the shortest threads ever…
Operating system: Ooo-bun-too.
African philosophy: Ooo-boon-too.
Thanks! (that’s how I’ve been saying it in my head, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t realize it was named after a philosophy, either… so double-win)
I pronounce it “LIN @x.” 
Blast…wish there were a schwa on the keyboard.
ə.
Show-offs.
There’s one in every bunch.
You really shouldn’t put your schwa on the keyboard…
That’s right… keep your schwa in your mouth, where it belongs.
Thanks, but where’s the accent?
oo-BUN-too, I presume?
Will I get laughed at if I pronounce the OS ooh-BOON-too? Because that’s how I always imagined it was pronounced.
Actually, not boon rhyming with tune. More like the vowel sound in look or book.
No, you’d be pronouncing it pretty much the way that the Ubuntu website says it should be pronounced:
In this video, at about 0:48, you can hear how Mark Shuttleworth pronounces “Ubuntu”.
He actually pronounces it ubʊntu, the middle ʊ vowel being the same sound that is in could, not *cooed *or cud (although cud and *could *are pronounced the same by some English speakers.)
Yes, it’s unfortunate that there’s no way to write that in a sort of “pseudo-phonetic” way. I think “u-boon-tu” is the closest you can get.
In fact, all three “u” sounds in “ubuntu” are pronounced the same, which is consistent with the Bantu languages from which the word comes.