The word tuple is used quite a lot in computing. That’s what database people call a row in a table. It’s also what several programming languages call a structure where the fields are ordered but not named.
It seems to be one of those words that is hard to translate, so other languages often use the English word. And yet there is some confusion about pronunciation. Some say tahple, some say twople. As far as I know there is no dispute about the spelling, it’s tuple. So where do you get twople from that?
I think having a lot of exceptions on pronunciation from what is the obvious pronunciation is bad for language. There are words that are fancy or interesting enough to perhaps deserve it, but tuple isn’t one of them. So I’m going to keep saying tahple.

Thursday, August 21st, 2008