You 🇬🇧 folks can be mad about how we pronounce “hover”, but at least we don’t absolutely butcher “router”.

@caseyliss American pronunciation of ‘router’ makes it an extension of ‘rout’ ie. “A disorderly retreat or flight following defeat”. British pronunciation makes it an extension of ‘route’ ie. “A way for travel from one place to another”.

@caseyliss as a non English speaker: you really wanna crack open the can of worms that is the weirdness of the English language in general?

@caseyliss as a British person from the Midlands, I never know how to pronounce router. Just as many people will get confused either way it’s said.

@jxmullins @caseyliss the American solder pronunciation confuses me every time I hear it.

@caseyliss Sometimes I think you’re not happy unless you’re unhappy.

@caseyliss Fair. But then how do you differentiate between route and rout?
Only so many mouth sounds we can all make, so some are gonna be the same

@marcintosh I was cracking wise. But, uh, thanks?

@andrewwade “Rowt” and “root”

@dkatri Does the say “saLmon” or “sammon”?

@vmachiel No, but I reckon we have both German and French beat.

@caseyliss wait so if you say Virginia Tech won convincingly (hypothetically of course) would you say they “rooted” the opposition or they “rowted” them?
Genuinely asking, zero snark.

@caseyliss there are some that do pronounce the L - from my experience a lot of South Asian background people do (half my family). But fair point.

@caseyliss When something seems awry with a word, check out its etymology. Router comes from the french word "route", which is a way, or a path, like Route 66. O and U together in French are pronounced "oo", hence the pronunciation.
Very interestingly, the woodworking implement which bears the same name comes from middle English "wroten", related to "root", and we do pronounce this one: "rowter".

@caseyliss (cos if you say they “rooted” them, then our Australian friends might have an opinion )

@andrewwade rowted. But that’s not common vernacular over here.

@caseyliss It’s both a little funnier and a little more confusing as an Australian. We share much in common for pronunciation with the UK, unsurprising. But we have, historically at least, also used “root” as an alternate, more ok to say in public, equivalent to “fuck”. i.e. “get rooted”, “it’s rooted”, etc. (1/2)

So despite the fact many say rooter, there’s a mix of pronunciations, and personally I go with the US version when talking about network stuff just to avoid the sound of thethe word and the potential connotations here (2/2)

@caseyliss we can differentiate between a network router and a woodworking router.

@caseyliss
Good sir, I think you’ll find how we spell things is of no consequence! Don’t apply logic here!

This thing provides a route (pronounced root) for data and so it must be a “rooter”. Direction, like roots of a tree.

I think you’ve made the unfortunate mistake of pronouncing the ‘u’ we put in there for no reason.

Don’t worry old bean. Just start saying “root” and we’ll soon get back to normality!

@caseyliss I’m at peace with the US pronunciation of route, but I will still wince when someone there says “en route”.