features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued —- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions —- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done so much programming that distinguishes between
if (going) {
and
if (!going) {
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it seems to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French `si' or German `doch' with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.
Here's a related quirk. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding that bug *now* or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!").
:International Style: =====================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth English'. These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. —- though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on {{Commonwealth Hackish}} reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers.
:How to Use the Lexicon: ************************
:Pronunciation Guide: =====================
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the following conventions:
1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables).
2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim".
3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aitch el el/. /Z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
4. Vowels are represented as follows:
a
back, that
ar
far, mark
aw
flaw, caught
ay
bake, rain
e
less, men
ee
easy, ski
eir
their, software
i
trip, hit
i:
life, sky
o
father, palm
oh
flow, sew
oo
loot, through
or
more, door
ow
out, how
oy
boy, coin
uh
but, some
u
put, foot
y
yet, young
yoo
few, chew
[y]oo
/oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.
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