Pronunciation of "Aux"

[michael8rown]

Hi, this may be a silly question, but how do you pronounce Aux? “Ox” (like auxiliary), “Oaks”, or “Oh” (like the French aux)?

[OtherBookmarks]

I assume aux like in auxiliary and most importantly auxolotl See pronunciation of axolotl

[Andrew]

@OtherBookmarks

See pronunciation of axolotl

Not sure that clarifies; I say “iliary” and “olotl”.

[OtherBookmarks]

olotl → axolotl
olotl → auxolotl

[michael8rown]

TIL that there is even such a thing as an axolotl. Thank you for educating me! (And the logo makes so much more sense now, too.)

I was hoping others were leaning toward Ox, too. That’s the way my brain wants to pronounce it.

[srxl]

There’s also the Nahuatl pronounciation (timestamped video) of axolotl, which is a bit like “ah-SHO-lot”. Trying to throw in the added “u” in there, I end up saying something like “oar-SHO-lot” - little clunky, but it also works.

[das-g]

Because my native language is German, I’ve until now imagined it to be pronounced [ˈaʊ̯ks], like in the standard¹ German pronunciation of the city name Auxburg ([ˈaʊ̯ksbʊʁk]). But I guess that doesn’t make much sense if we consider “aux” to be an abbreviation of the English word “auxiliary”, unless we trace that one back to its Latin roots.

---

¹as opposed to the local German dialect at Auxburg (Swabian), where that city’s name is pronounced ['ao̯gʃbʊrg] or similar

[michael8rown]

The pronunciation you linked to is interesting! I’m hearing “owgz” in it, which might be how a Texan with a thick drawl might say “auxiliary”: owg-ZILL-ary.

[chris_debian]

Perhaps we could think of this in the same way that Linus Torvalds explains pronouncing ‘Linux’. Fundamentally he suggests a way to pronounce it, as it is based on his first name, and then has an ‘x’ at the end, to reference Unix. So, ‘Linus’+‘X’= Linux. Linus then went on to say that although that is the way he suggests pronouncing it, in the spirit of software freedom/ open source, people are encouraged to pronounce it in whichever way they prefer.

This article references his thoughts.

Thanks,

Chris

[jakehamilton]

The name is indeed short for Auxiliary. The correct way to pronounce Aux is “Awks”, like the beginning of the word auxiliary.

[pbek]

As Axolotl it would be Critically Endangered!