Well, yesterday, someone wanted to make me believe that the word router was pronounced in the same way as 'shouter'. Anyway, I always thought it was pronounced 'rooter', so I checked on dict.leo.org and clicked through the forum discussion and the links it provided.

Now I want to know for sure: How do you pronounce router? And which area are you from?

It really depends on the context for me. A device that helps many computers connect to the internet is always a rowter. A country road could be root or rowte, depending on my mood. And it's always root 66.

Oops, forgot about the ambiguity of the term. With router, I meant the device that gets your computer connected to the internet. Sorry.

Yes, it's root 66 and using a rowter between computers. I've never heard router as rooter anywhere in the US.

Artemis

I work in IT and it's always been "rowter". I believe you'd get laughed at if you called it a "rooter" in a computer setting.

As for route, well, personally it's "root" to me. I just couldn't sing "get your kicks on Rowt 66". I've heard it pronounced both ways, depending on what part of the country I'm in at the time (same with "creek" creek/crick, "roof" roof/ruff, etc).

The only alternate pronunciation that drives me absolutely, completely, nails-down-a-chalkboard crazy is those pretentious idiots who mispronounce "Nevada". Especially the ones on shows like CSI who should theoretically know better.

It's Ne-vad(rhymes with dad)-a.

Not Ne-vad(rhymes with cod)-a.

Grrrr.

I voted wrong. Scratch the one in the South on the first question. That should be 'I don't pronouce it that way'.

Sue, I've never heard them say Ne-vod-a on CSI. There was a discussion in TV Guide about a recent ep where a perp said To-NO-pah instead of TonoPAH. Brass, interviewing the perp said it right. Then later in the conversation intentionally mispronounced it as ToNopah to mock the brother who had never lived there and killed his brother and assumed his identity. So it was written that way, IMHO. But yeah, CSI is shot in LA with occasional scenic outings to LV.

Artemis

I say root and rowter.

What always gets me is when a TV or movie character says he's from LAN-caster, Pennsylvania. That's the way Lancaster, Calif. is pronounced, so I'm not surprised by Hollywood actors who don't know that its LANG-c'ster, Pa. But it still irks me.

What a coincidence. I no sooner finished posting in this thread, when I went to read the news, and read how at yesterday's White House roundtable on engery, Pres. Obama was talking about Orion Energy Systems, and kept calling it "OAR-ee-on".

Hmm. OAR-ee-on sounds like a bit of Boston. He did go to Harvard. The rest of us say o-RI-on.

Artemis

/me wonders who the Brit is who pronounces it 'rowter'...

Last night I remembered what a rooter is. When I was growing up the commercial on TV kept singing "Roto Rooter, the way to get your drains unplugged"
In the US, a rooter is a mechanical snake that is sent through your sewer pipes to dislodge the roots that grow into your underground pipes. This happens in Los Angeles a lot where plants migrate to water since there is little surface water. It's compounded by the fact that construction companies used orangeburg pipe. From wikipedia:
Since the pipe is basically paper, it decays in 30 years or so and becomes very vulnerable to tree and plant roots. Every house in my neighborhood had to have their sewer pipe replaced with PVC.
I know. More knowledge than you really needed.

Artemis

The song I remember goes: "Call Roto Rooter, that's the name, and away goes trouble down the drain!"

Maybe it is because this is what I think of when I hear the word "rooter", that I say 'rowter' for "router".

I do think it interesting that so many people on the poll answered Root-Rowter. You would think most people would say either Root-Rooter or Rowt-Rowter.

That's it, Vicki! I couldn't remember the song exactly. It's been years since I've heard it. I guess they don't advertise in the LA area any more. I was reminded of it because just last week folks down the block had their front lawn and part of their driveway torn up for putting in PVC pipe.
Anyway, I've always been a root - rowter person. I guess consistency isn't key.
:cool;
Artemis

But, see, they're spelled differently and are two entirely different things - rooter and router. I pronounce the first just like it's spelled "rooter", and the second "rowter".

And now I have that darn song in my head... it's insidious!

Roto Rooter makes me think more of Ghost Hunters than anything. The two head guys, Jason and Grant, work for them as their day job.

Exactly. "rooter" and "rowter"

Now, of course, the same can be said for "root" and "route", both of which I pronounce as "root", but hey, this is English we're talking about, and who ever said English was logical or consistent?

PS - Sue, may I humbly suggest that instead of thinking about rooters and routers, we'd all love to see you thinking about flarks and plarks?

I went with root and rowter because you didn't have a choice for root/rowt and rowter. Like Karen, whether I pronounce route as root or as rowt depends entirely on the person I'm talking to. That leads me to believe that my parents' Oklahoman accent keeps slipping out of my mouth at odd moments, as does the Colorado accent I grew up with. After all, I still vaccilate between pilluh and pillow.

I also went to the link you posted and listened to the pronunciation. I don't know if you realize it or not, but the speaker had an English accent: ROO-tah. Not only do most Americans pronounce the first vowel as an "ow," but the second syllable is almost swallowed up in the growl of the final "r." So both syllables are completely different from the English pronunciation.

Yes, obviously, I did notice that little tidbit about the British accent (the whole non-rhotic thing). Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked all of you.

Sorry, Lara, that was my ignorance speaking. When I was taking German in college, I couldn't tell the difference between my professors' accents, even though they told me they had different ones (one from Berlin and the other from Dusseldorf, IIRC). So, despite your fluency in English, I wasn't sure if you recognized different English accents or how much you knew about the differences between the various accents.

I've always pronounced Nevada the second way, Sue--and so has everyone I know. Maybe that's another regional accent thing?

Not when you live in Nevada.

I have never heard Nevada pronounced as Nevoda, personally, and can see how that would be irritating to those who live there.

What drives me nuts is the extra "r" that people interject into my state, making it Warshington. And I hear it ALL the time. You don't warsh your hair, so seriously, call it WASHington.

Actually, I think the people who say Warshington *do* warsh their hair. :rolleyes:

What upsets me even more than that are people who automatically think Washington means D.C. Believe it or not, some numbskull gov't employee actually entered my info in the system so that my daughter's birth certificate says her mother was born in Tacoma, Washington, D.C.

Note: Edited by me after posting because I wanted to make it clear that the rolled eyes was not for you, EditorJax, but for people who say warsh and Warshington.

Actually, just to be confusing, there is a small town in Missouri: Nevada, Missouri.

It's pronounced "Ne-VAY-da."

Just to throw everyone totally off.

Oh, it's definitely rowt and rowter, always. "We'll take that route to get there" is "rowt". Pronouncing that "root" sounds vaguely odd, sort of funny and almost pretentious to me (I guess I have this image of the "posh British accent" from some movie or something). I don't know how I learned to pronounce it that way, but I did. Answering where I was from was tricky, though. My first 13 years of life were spent in the Midwest, and the rest after that in the West, but I've been going to college in the Midwest for the last 6 years . . . maybe I should've said middle instead of west? (And my parents come from the east, so if you mix their influence in, that muddles things more.)

I'm with Doranwen in pronunciation, rowt and rowter. However, when I think of the clothes brand, it's root 66. I don't know what that means, but I can go both ways with route. It's always rowter, though.

I pronounce it "rooter", because that's what they pronounce it in Greek - we tend to read "ou" as "oo", because of the Greek ου which is pronounced as "oo". It hadn't occurred to me that it could be pronounced as "rowter"!

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

I say router, because it not only looks like "route", it's also what the device does - routing traffic. I'm from Germany.

It looks like in countries that don't speak english the norm is router pronounced as 'rooter'... In Portugal I've always heard it pronounced 'rooter' as well, but I don't think it has some particular reason for it to be that way. Probably someone mispronounced it the first time and it became the rule??

Back in the day (a couple of decades ago), I was working on a DOS-based application at my job, and one of the users pronounced the operating system like it was a measure of medicine or a Spanish two (DOSE instead of DOSS). Disk Operating System - the acronym is pronounced with a short 'o' (like in 'moss') unless you say 'operating' with a long 'o' like in 'go.'

I corrected him. He corrected me. I decided not to argue.

Not so, because in many English-speaking countries it's also pronounced 'rooter': in the UK and Ireland, in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as far as I know, and probably also India and Malta as those countries use British English.


Wendy

Sorry for my misconception . I got that idea from looking at the poll results (just checked them again to see if I was wrong the first time) and there were more votes on 'rowter' from people from places where english is the mother tongue.

But I suppose it's one of those words in which double pronunciation is accepted, especially considering the variety of accents that can be found in each country where english is primarily spoken. I think...

No, it's just one of those words - like tomato - which North Americans pronounce differently from other English speakers

Wendy

It is said rowter in the IT field in Australia and New Zealand.
Route however, depends on a number of things - which part of NZ/Au you're from (and hence the speech patterns prominent to a local area), how you were taught at school and under which system, industry you work in, etc.
I was taught it was 'root' at school, but on entering University was quickly corrected to 'rowt', which was (and still is as far as I know) the correct pronunciation for the geographic industry I was in. Road networking was referred to by rowts, not roots. Roots meant 'those things in the ground that feed trees' or.... well - you all read nfic.

It does bring up the interesting issue of speech patterns though.
I remember being in the US once and when I was asked where I was from I said Auckland "ork-land' but people kept thinking I was saying Oakland... despite the fact I really don't think my kiwi accent remotely even passes for any US accent.