Over the course of the 20 years that I've used Linux, i've said and heard a number of ways that people pronounce things and think I have a pretty good idea of the most accepted ways to pronounce and say things when dealing with Linux systems. When you're on a conference call at work or just dealing with colleagues face to face you want to make sure you know what they're talking about. I overheard two co-workers (Joe and Scott) talking the other day. Joe said "cat proc cpuinfo". Scott wasn't getting it so Joe said "no.. no, type cat slash proc slash cpuinfo" and eventually got on the keyboard himself. When asking someone to do something.. you don't say the slash.. e.g. "list out the etsy hosts file" or "tail var log messages" One thing you want to do is learn how to pronounce each of the top directories in Linux. Some of the ones I hear differently from people are: /etc: etsy (like the website) Not "E T C" or "et cetera" /lib: lib.. rhymes with rib. Not libe. /lib64: see above /mnt: mount /proc: prock.. rhymes with rock /sbin: s bin /selinux: S E Linux /tmp: temp /var: rhymes with jar /usr: user Other things i've heard pronounced differently than the majority of how people pronounce them: Linux: most people say it with a short i like spin. MySQL: most people say "My S Q L", not "my sequel" fstab: F stab (some say F S tab) initrd: init R D fsck: F S C K - or FS check chown: as one syllable.. rhymes with 'own' chmod: as one syllable.. rhymes with 'nod' ls: L S (ell ess) sudo: rhymes with voodoo vim: rhymes with gym emacs: rhymes with junk