This reminds me of a joke (which depends on recognizing a connection between monads, continuations, control, and goto statements): Q: What do you get when you cross a monad with a continuation? A: A gonad. (I am sure I will hear the groans right through the ethernet! :-) -Paul Tom Harper wrote:

Hahahah, it's pronounced the way you've been saying it =)

On 5/10/07, Dan Weston wrote:

...

I've been pronouncing monad like gonad (moh-nad), but it occurs to me that it might be pronounced like monoid (mah-nad).

Is there an official way to pronouce this word - maybe with a Scottish accent? :)

Hi

A more pressing question. How do you pronounce the following:

->

"to"

<-

"from", or "drawn from" for list comprehensions.

[]

"nil" In reality, if you want to talk Haskell and are in person, grab a whiteboard. If you are over IRC or email, don't worry. Thanks Neil

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 09:20:18PM +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote:

More curiosely, that (>>=) function. Why is the Haskell name for it (>>=), and why is it pronounced "bind"? Neither of these choices make a lot of sense to me...

For the correct pronunciation of >>= see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2006-November/019190.html Excerpted from the above email: (>>=) :: Monster m => m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b (>>=) should be read as the monster on the left expelling values through its rows of teeth and over its tongue at the function on the right. (Its pronunciation is a sort of bestial hissing that is difficult to describe; when you say it correctly, the terminal may become slightly moist.) -- David Roundy Department of Physics Oregon State University

Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

...

->

"to"

...

<-

"from", or "drawn from" for list comprehensions.

...

[]

"nil"

More curiosely, that (>>=) function. Why is the Haskell name for it (>>=), and why is it pronounced "bind"? Neither of these choices make a lot of sense to me...

(>>=) is chosen as it seems fairly nice when you use a sugar free monadic style, foo x >>= \y -> bar y >>= \z -> return (y+z) To understand why it's called "bind" look at common sugar for it, e.g. the above using do-notation and a "let" notation (e.g. monadic- or ]administrative- (A-)normal form): do y <- foo x z <- bar y return (y+z) letM y = foo x in letM z = bar y in y + z So the effect of (>>=) is to bind the value produced by a monadic computation to some variable. If we view impure languages as implicitly using a monad, their "let" statements (which bind variables to values) translate to exactly the above.

[If I sound definitive below, it's because I am stating facts; but they are facts about the community of mathematicians and computer scientists I have interacted with in person. I'm sure other physically-connected communities have adopted different conventions] Dan Piponi wrote:

A more pressing question. How do you pronounce the following:

->

In types, or logical formulae, "arrow". The type of ($) is pronounced <said fast> A arrow B <now slower> arrow A arrow B where inflection or variation in pause length suffices for the parentheses to be implied. In much more complex expressions you probably have to write them down whilst speaking and point as you go. I've seen people use their hands to indicate parenthesis; lightly cupped each side of the head, rather like the 'bunny-ears for quotation' thing some people do. In a lambda expression, the arrow simply isn't read at all. \x -> x + 1 is read "lambda X X plus one". Some people would read the arrow as 'dot', "lambda X dot X plus one" which is a reflection of the fact that haskell's '->' is the same thing as a 'church dot'.

<-

I've most often heard this read 'gets'. Note that this symbol is often used for assignment when discussing simple languages (e.g. algol-like).

[]

"nil". Similarly ':' is often read 'cons'. I've heard it suggested that '>>=' be read 'bind' or 'binds' and >> as 'then'. Back to the thread, I concur with the post who points to 'monomorphism' and 'monoid'. In category theory a morphism is described as 'mono' if it has the obvious generalisation of what monomorphism normally means; I can't imagine anybody pronouncing that 'Moe No'. By analogy, monad and monoid have always been pronounced with a short first O in my hearing. It may be different outside the UK. Jules

I cringe to post to a thread with this subject line, but no American mathematician I know would call it "Moe-nad". I think the US math consensus is "Mon - ad", where mon is like the faux-jamaican "Hey, mon", or (more to the point) monoid or monomorphism. Sometimes Dictionaries are only as good as (their current crop of fact-checkers) x (current budget) On Thu, 10 May 2007, Melissa O'Neill wrote:

Although I hate to resort to dictionaries, curiosity got the better of me and I find the following.

According to both Merriam Webster and the OED, monad is indeed pronounced exactly like gonad. BUT, in the UK at least, there is more than way to pronounce gonad, so it doesn't necessarily clarify things.

In the US (according to Merriam Webster), it appears that the correct pronunciation is mō-nad, like joe-nad.

In the UK (according to the OED), it appears that the pronunciation is either mȯ-nad, like gone-bad (i.e., with an "o" sound like the "o" in lot or pot), or mō-nad, like joe-nad.

So, from this information, we can conclude that to be truly international, go with the long O sound, and to sound more English, use the short o sound.

Melissa.

P.S. See http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html for the meanings of the phonetic symbols "ō" and "ȯ". (Assuming they make it through email, etc., which is probably unlikely, but we'll see.)

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