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How to pronounce kernighan

person community-consensus

kur nih han /ˈkɜːrnɪhæn/ mp3

kernighan is most commonly pronounced "kur nih han" (/ˈkɜːrnɪhæn/). This is the widely-used reading among engineers, though edge cases exist.

Brian Kernighan (C, Unix, "K" in K&R and AWK).

Pronouncing project and product names correctly avoids the small but persistent friction of being gently corrected during standups, conference Q&As, and team calls. Hearing the word a few times locks in the right reading better than reading IPA ever will. Pronounce is a community-maintained dictionary — every entry tagged with a confidence level and (where possible) a citable source.

Hear it from the command line

$ say-it kernighan # primary × 3 + audible "or: …" for each alternate
$ say-it --why kernighan # print the dict entry with source URL

Install the CLI: git clone https://github.com/anzy-renlab-ai/pronounce.git && cd pronounce && ./install.sh

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