Monday 10 September 2007

Pronouncing GITEX

It’s jee tex. Not gheetex or jittex or, God forbid, Gittex. It was originally called GITE (pronounced jeet as in French holiday home), for Gulf Information Technology Exhibition. Some bright spark thought of adding the X a few years on.

It's lie-nux. Originator Linus Torvalds is called lie-nuss. Not Linn Us. See Charlie Brown.

It's router as in trade route. It re-routes signals. Not router as in the rout of the Byzantines or as in grooving tool. Or, indeed, as in hunting for truffles.

Oh. And while we're on the subject, it's Jebel Ali as in Jebbel Alley. Not Gerbil Arlee.

Just so's we're clear...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, no!

It's GITEX as in 'I am', as it's the Gulf IT fair.

Linn-ux is a close English rendering of the odd sounding 'Lee-nux' - I categorise that as acceptable :) Anything is better than Lie-nux (as an a 'lie').

Gerbil Ali is, of course, unforgivable, as is Doo-buy, Qa'arrrr, Barrrrr-raiin, Sarrdeee and other Del Boy like pronunciations.

Chris Saul

Anonymous said...

The worst has got to be the muppet in the radio adds who pronounces his u as 'jew' i.e. Dubai becomes Jewbye - makes my blood boil every time!

Alexander said...

Or people that think they're sounding Arab when they say Russ Al Khaimah...

Anonymous said...

I thought it was pronounced F***ing Gitex.

Anonymous said...

No that's "F***ing Gitex traffic!!!!"

MaliZOMG said...

a) Anonymous = Shelo.

b) This article made me laugh. Thanks Alex.

Anonymous said...

A post that has clearly stood the test of time - as relevant today as in 2007. Thanks Alex - it's fabulous.

U reader said...

And pretty relevant today as we'll (in 2013) !

Unknown said...

2018 and we still don’t know the correct pronunciation

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