At the risk of seeming trivial, I have been noticing that podcasters in the US tend to say something like “ar-DEW-er”. I had just assumed that “Ardour” was the international spelling of “ardor”, and have pronounced it accordingly. I am guessing this is how Canadians would say it. I am wondering if Paul has a preference, and if any podcasts exist of him saying it? I could not turn anything up on Google.
That said, in the spirit of open source, I think people should pronounce it any way they want. There are a lot of variants of Ubuntu. But I would hate for an American pronounciation to be based on confusion about that “u” that we leave out when we write words like ardor, color, and endeavor.
Similarly to what Linus has released about the pronounciation of his kernel, perhaps there should be an .ogg on this site with:
“My name is Paul Davis and I pronounce Ardour as ‘Ardour’”
Do you speak a variety of English that usually drops “r” sounds at the ends of words? If so, you will also say many other words differently than I do. That makes this simple question a little sticky. To help me get this clear in my mind, do you also pronounce the word “ardor” as are-duh?
Trying to spell exact pronunciations without some agreed-upon transcription scheme doesn’t give a lot of clarity. I second the notion that you link a little .ogg file on the site.
