[HN Gopher] A Man Who Coined the Word "Robot" Defends Himself
___________________________________________________________________
A Man Who Coined the Word "Robot" Defends Himself
Author : jruohonen
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-01-21 19:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| jruohonen wrote:
| R.U.R. is always worth a (re)read.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Standard Ebooks has a CC0 copy:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/karel-capek/r-u-r/paul-sel...
| robin_reala wrote:
| Sorry, correction (not sure what I was thinking), this is a
| PD-in-the-US edition, not a CC0 edition. It is also PD in
| death-plus-70 regions.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Was the title automatically editorialized? The article clearly
| says it's "The" man who coined the word "Robot"
| moritzruth wrote:
| HN does this. Just yesterday there was
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39078539
| xnorswap wrote:
| Despite a policy of "use original titles", the HN software
| automatically mangles titles.
|
| This is one of the more bizarre auto-editing of titles it does
| because of how pointless it feels.
|
| "The man who" is established English convention. "A man who" is
| changing the meaning for the sake of it without producing a
| clearer title. The person is unambiguously defined, so the
| definitive article is entirely correct. If the person isn't one
| of a set of people to whom the description could apply, it
| makes no sense to use the indefinite article. If a title was,
| "The man who starts every day with steak and chips" then
| switching to, "A man who starts every day with steak and chips"
| feels correct, he almost surely is not alone in doing so.
|
| In contrast, "A man who coined the word Robot", is not correct,
| it alters the meaning to suggest that someone else could also
| have coined the word.
|
| HN also removes "How" from the start of titles which often
| destroys meaning too. That is explained as trying to "reduce
| clickbait" titles, but the effect is often to make the title
| nonsensical.
|
| It's one of the many contradictions about this place.
|
| I feels as if whoever set up this system hasn't truly
| understood the meaning that "The man who" conveys, and has
| attempted to force a version they see as "more correct" despite
| it producing nonsense.
| jojojaf wrote:
| I say go the Slavic route and lose all the articles; "Man who
| coined word 'Robot' defends himself"
|
| Fits with the 'robot' theme
| Y_Y wrote:
| Man coins "robot", defends self
| Almondsetat wrote:
| "robot" man self defends
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Defensive "robot" coiner.
| csours wrote:
| Coin Operated Boy: A Man, Da.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnyYTjjhJ0 (Dresden
| Dolls singer is Amanda Palmer - A Man, Da)
| pvg wrote:
| _go the Slavic route_
|
| poleka, lampata!
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Looks like it doesn't change all titles that start with
| "the", see e.g. these two from the current front page:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39066795
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082552
|
| So it only changes "the man" to "a man"? (And I'm guessing
| also "the woman" to "a woman"?)
|
| I'm struggling to understand the reasoning here. Can someone
| give me an example of a title starting with "the man" which
| sounds excessively clickbaity, but "a man" fixes it? I can't
| think of one.
|
| Now I'm wondering what other auto-editing rules HN applies.
| Is there a list somewhere?
| j4yav wrote:
| Sometimes a human also fixes them afterwards.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/up-in-the-air-meet-
| the-...
|
| > Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World
| for Free
|
| > Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
|
| > The Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
|
| > A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9916974
| networked wrote:
| You can edit the title of "a" submission when this happens.
|
| My experience is that, if a moderator hasn't touched it, the
| title of a story remains editable throughout the edit window
| of the first two hours. It doesn't matter what automatic
| changes were applied to the title on submission; they are not
| reapplied when you edit.
|
| I restore the original title if HN's software changes it
| poorly. When I look at /newest or even the front page, it
| seems few submitters do. Either they are unaware of the
| possibility, or they think it isn't allowed. (AFAICT, it is
| allowed as long as you don't use it to break the guidelines.
| Here is a recent comment by dang saying you can do it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38993985.)
| Danieru wrote:
| IMHO, the "The" and "How" handling were smart decisions back
| during the digg era.
|
| Over time those features of clickbait have become defocused.
| Removing The and How handling might make sense now.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > If the person isn't one of a set of people to whom the
| description could apply, it makes no sense to use the
| indefinite article.
|
| > he's the guy who (along with his brother Josef) invented
| the word "robot."
|
| Just to be superly, unnecessarily pedantic: in this case the
| person _is_ one of a set of people, so although I don 't
| agree with the title being rewritten, it does actually make
| sense.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _This is one of the more bizarre auto-editing of titles it
| does because of how pointless it feels._
|
| Someone should take a page from "Do Androids Dream of
| Electric Sheep" and create an AutoGPT "replicant" version of
| HN, including LLM versions of the moderators, PG, and the top
| commenters and submitters.
| neuromanser wrote:
| Of course, in light of Betteridge's law, that version would
| be called Androids Don't Dream of Electric Sheep.
| badcppdev wrote:
| Tag with (1935) ??
|
| Quite an interesting short read and I guess a prompt to actually
| read R.U.R
| twic wrote:
| It is an enjoyable story. My copy is a double edition with War
| with the Newts, which i think is actually better, if not as
| prophetic. Yet.
| derbOac wrote:
| I recommend seeing the play if you have the chance. It's a
| great experience, with a lot of relevance to the current day.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The article is an excerpt from a book published in 2024, even
| if its subject is history.
|
| So a tag with an old date would not be appropriate.
| js8 wrote:
| I think it has been generally accepted that Josef Capek (Karel's
| brother) was actually the one who coined the word "robot". Karel
| Capek wanted to call them "labors" originally.
| layer8 wrote:
| He could take solace in the fact that the Japanese later picked
| up on it: https://patlabor.fandom.com/wiki/Labor ;)
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is,
| the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as
| "forced labor".
|
| While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close
| cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the
| shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robic"
| means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robie kawe"
| means "I'm making a coffee" and "Zrob cos" (imperative mood - do
| something!) is a call for action to take action. It's a popular
| multi-use verb.
|
| "Robota" is a job or some work that one has to do, not
| necessarily forced as Google suggests.
|
| Edit: Also adding another interesting fact. Golem is an inanimate
| entity from Yiddish folklore, with a story strongly related to a
| 16th Prague Rabbi. I looked it up on Wikipedia if there was any
| connection with the "Robot" and indeed there seem to be some -
| "The play was written in Prague, and while Capek denied that he
| modeled the robot after the golem, many similarities are seen in
| the plot." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem)
| gambiting wrote:
| I've always read that it came from "robotnik" which just means
| "person who is doing something". And I agree, I'm also Polish
| and "robota" does not imply forced labour in the slightest,
| maybe it does in Czech but I doubt it given the close
| similarity between languages. It's quite common for people to
| say "Ide do roboty" which just means "I'm going to work"(as in
| - my place of employment).
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| I'd translate "robotnik" as a "worker". A "person who is
| doing something" sounds a bit too general. Nevertheless, it's
| easy to guess that the root of the word is the same verb.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| So "robota" would cover a personal or job-related chore and
| "robotnik" is a person performing such a chore?
| rvba wrote:
| In Polsh:
|
| "Robotnik" means *manual* worker. E.g. someone fixing
| roads, or working in a factory.
|
| "Pracownik" is a generic word for "employee". Can be an
| office worker or an manual worker.
|
| "Robic" basically means "to do". While "pracowac" means
| "to work". As you can notice one is more formal than
| another.
|
| "Robota" is a less formal word, something closer to a
| "gig" (however it also means "work" or "job"). You will
| probably not find it in written texts. In writing "praca"
| (work) sounds more formal.
|
| As a bonus, if you are a (manual) worker who complains
| and makes some not subtle digs about your job, you can
| say that you "have to go to your kolchoz tomorrow" (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz ). As the communist
| slogan said "work is your second home" after all :)
|
| On a side note, do Czechs really like the polish word
| "pomidorek"? (Little tomato)
| pauke wrote:
| No, in Czech the meaning really is more specific and forced
| labor is not an overly bad translation, it's work done by
| serfs in medieval times. It can be used to describe any
| work as heavy, but that's either in joke, or when used by
| people geographically close to Poland (typically referring
| to mining).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is there some historical reason for this?
|
| I vaguely remember that in English, we have words like
| "cattle," French etymology, and "cow" Germanic, and the
| speculation is that it is because the aristocracy were
| French for much of England's history (so, the French word
| is used to refer to cows as a sort of abstract resource
| to be considered in bulk).
| pauke wrote:
| I believe it's a similar thing. Semi-educated guess based
| on historical facts: Because of various (not least
| religious) reasons, Czech-speaking intelligentsia pretty
| much ceased to exist mid-17th century (fact, replaced by
| German/Latin) and only actual serfs spoke Czech, work and
| robota became defacto synonym (speculation). And when it
| became fashionable and cool to speak Czech 100-200 years
| later for the city-dwellers (fact), they probably felt
| the need to differentiate whatever they were doing as a
| job from the definitely uncool farmers of the countryside
| (speculation).
| int_19h wrote:
| The evolution is the other way around - the original
| meaning of that root in proto-Slavic was obligatory work,
| and that one in turn is a derivative of a PIE word with
| the same meaning.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Slavic/o...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Slavic/o...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
| Eur...
| rebolek wrote:
| I'm Czech and while those two languages are close, "robota"
| is really forced work in Czech. What you called "robota" in
| Polish is called "prace" in Czech. In Czech, "Robota" is
| forced work and has bad connotations. See
| https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robota . It's interesting that
| this page doesn't have Polish translation.
| petr25102018 wrote:
| In the region where I was growing up next to Poland, we say
| "chodit do roboty" when describing normal work.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| A lot of Czech people use this phrase in a very subtle,
| almost undetectable jest, but it is still fundamentally
| in jest. Drawing a connection between having to work for
| a living and likening it to being forced to work. It's
| similar to saying "Back to the salt mines" meaning back
| to work.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| It cannot be helped if your _prace_ feels much like
| _robota_. Which, granted, happens a lot.
| rebolek wrote:
| I don't doubt that, you're probably from somewhere around
| Ostrava. There are of course regional differences. I'm
| from Brno and instead of "jit do prace" we usually used
| "jit do hokny", "jit do hacku", or just "jit makat".
| Whenever I hear word "robota", I connect it with my
| grand-grand-...-father who was forced to work ("robota")
| by "drab" (overseer) and didn't like it. So he cut
| overseer's head with his scythe, became a village hero
| and founded a church there.
|
| So I'm hard-wired to dislike "robota".
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > So he cut overseer's head with his scythe, became a
| village hero and founded a church there
|
| do go on, sounds like quite a story in there.
| oli-g wrote:
| I did not expect to read hantec on HN today. Enough
| internet and about time for a skopek I guess.
| kgeist wrote:
| Reminds of the Russian "chodit na rabotu".
| agapon wrote:
| Interesting that in Ukrainian robota and pratsia are
| synonymous. Although, some derived words are different in
| meaning. Like robitnik is a worker but pratsivnik is an
| employee. I see in another comment that the same is true in
| Polish.
| int_19h wrote:
| Etymologically Czech is the most conservative here. In other
| Slavic languages and in Proto-Slavic the original meaning was
| also forced/compelled labor (hence also why "rab" or "rob"
| means "slave" and not "worker" in most East and South Slavic
| languages). It just happened to evolve into a generic term
| meaning "labor" because the forced/compelled kind was so
| widespread and normalized.
|
| Slavic languages aren't the only ones with such a trajectory
| for the term - the German "Arbeit" is directly related and
| underwent a similar process.
| siftrics wrote:
| In Russian, rabota simply means "work" or "job" without any
| negative connotation.
| hippich wrote:
| Yet "rab" is translated as "slave"..
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| In Bulgarian, a slave is ,,rob".
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Same with Polish, but in Czech where the word originates
| from, there is a difference and normal work is called "prace"
| not "robota" which is reserved for forced labor or as an in-
| jest name for work.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| In Slovak, robota is apparently more like in Polish, it's
| commonly used to mean a job, sometimes as manual work, only
| historically for forced labour.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Russian isn't Czech and there are a lot of false cognates
| between the two.
| pvg wrote:
| These aren't false cognates though, they're actual
| cognates. Cognates can have different meanings. You might
| be thinking of 'false friends'.
| torstenvl wrote:
| My absolute favorite false cognate is 'arraigned'
| (English) vs. 'araignee' (French).
|
| Arraignments would be far more nervewracking if they
| significantly involved spiders.
| yread wrote:
| I like vonet and pachnout
| hirsin wrote:
| Interestingly, the Chernobyl liquidators forced to clean
| the roof were referred to as robots. I think the TV series
| expanded that to "bio robots", but books about the incident
| from tbe nineties simply used robot.
| dvdkon wrote:
| > "Robota" is a job or some work that one has to do, not
| necessarily forced as Google suggests.
|
| This is a popular misconception among speakers of other slavic
| languages, but the Czech word "robota" really does refer to
| forced work performed by feudal serfs:
| https://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?slovo=robota
| neuromanser wrote:
| Yes, robota has a different meaning in Czech (mandatory work
| performed by serfs for the benefit of their landlord) than in
| eg. Slovak or Russian where it means simply "work". Cf.
| Slovak phrase "Idem do roboty".
|
| Btw Rossum in "Rossum's Universal Robots" means "Reason".
| BossingAround wrote:
| In Czech, "robotnik" meant "serfs" and "robota" was the work
| that the serf was forced to do. Of course, nowadays, "robota"
| took the meaning of "a job" but that is not relevant to the
| etymology of the words.
| wastewastewaste wrote:
| We don't know when the word took on a new meaning though,
| serfdom in Austria Hungary was abolished 70 years before
| "robot" was first used
| lupire wrote:
| Speaking of Slavic etymology and robota, "slave" is derived
| from "Slav".
| jefftk wrote:
| _slave (n.) c. 1300, sclave, esclave, "person who is the
| chattel or property of another," from Old French esclave
| (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin Sclavus "slave"
| (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish
| esclavo), originally "Slav" (see Slav); so used in this
| secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery
| by conquering peoples._
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave
| thriftwy wrote:
| The first part makes sense, the second one doesn't: where
| would that 'c' come from? No such thing as Sclavic people,
| never was.
|
| Nevertheless, I'm not sure if there is any reflection on
| the fact that mediterranean pirates (and nomadic tribes
| further east) plundered Balkans for captives and
| southwestern europeans then bought them. And that, perhaps,
| was a suboptimal way to behave.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> No such thing as Sclavic people, never was._
|
| Sounds like there was to the Greeks:
|
| _Slav (n.) "one of the people who inhabit most of
| Eastern Europe," late 14c., Sclave, from Medieval Latin
| Sclavus (c. 800), from Byzantine Greek Sklabos (c. 580),
| from a shortening of Proto-Slavic _sloveninu "a Slav"* --
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/Slav
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not just the pirates, and not just Balkans, but also
| e.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades
|
| As for why there's a "k" there - Greeks would naturally
| adapt any foreign word to the phonotactics of their
| language, which does not have "sl" as a valid syllable
| onset, but does have "skl".
| thinkertraveler wrote:
| It's not derived, it's used - first by defeated.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It's not.
|
| How is it not?
|
| One of your other comments sounds like you agree with the
| etymology jefftk cited? But that says the exact same thing.
| The word slav was first, and the word slave was _made from
| it_.
|
| Something being "propaganda" and "revenge" does not stop it
| from being the origin of a word.
|
| Edit:
|
| Oh, you elaborated slightly. > It's not derived, it's used
| - first by defeated.
|
| That's what derived means. They took a word and used it to
| make a new word.
| thinkertraveler wrote:
| the other word is used in such way only as sounds similar
| to the second but has different meaning
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is sort of funny that when shortening it in English, we
| ended up with "bot," dropping the "ro," which looks like the
| more important part of the word.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm betting it's because Rob as a shortened version doesn't
| work.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| I've heard this shortening by Russians also American
| English "robo" was common
| int_19h wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first time. The English word "bus" is derived
| from a neologism "omnibus", "for all" (as in, "carriage for
| all") invented to describe the first attempts at mass
| transportation using horse carriages. In that word, "omni-"
| corresponds to "all", and "-bus" is just a suffix indicating
| dative declension of a plural noun.
| notbeuller wrote:
| In various Discworld books, Pratchett sort of unified Golumns
| with Asimov's three laws robots.
| beebeepka wrote:
| In Bulgaria, we use "rabota" (rabota) but eventually adopted
| "robotya" as a slang for working hard as a robot.
|
| Man, I really should travel more around Europe. COVID ruined my
| last planned vacation and I've stayed at home since then.
| paganel wrote:
| As your neighbor from the North (Romania) I highly recommend
| visiting the general Central and Eastern European area.
|
| In the last few years we've been to Prague, short stay in
| Vienna, Bratislava, Ohrid (spent a night in Pernik on the way
| there, which I count as part of the experience) and I'd also
| put Athens and Southern Greece/the Peloponnese on the list
| (even though it's not Eastern nor Central European). All very
| interesting and beautiful places in their own way (yes, even
| Athens), I highly recommend them.
| beebeepka wrote:
| all good recommendations. I needed some encouragement.
| Thank you.
|
| It's blowing my mind you willingly went to Pernik, though.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| His robot was hijacked to mean a mechanical man with gears and
| wires inside and he objected to that. I'm thinking of course that
| the public only had experience with these things -- or perhaps
| this was another fear of the time, the mechanization of jobs, and
| so the robot became the perfect avatar for this fear and so
| evolved.
|
| But surely the idea of a mechanical man predates the term, robot.
| Automatons? Or is the distinction that people understood
| automatons as stationary, a parkour toy, while the robot was a
| next level thing capable of traveling. Or was the distinction
| that a robot might have a mechanical brain and so could carry out
| wanton destruction on it's own?
|
| And was all this tied in with some creeping horror modern society
| saw in the machinery of The Great War?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The word "automaton" was coined to emphasize that the thing was
| inflexible. The word "robot" was coined to emphasize that it
| labored.
|
| I don't think those were equivalent at first.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Yeah, most automatons were just novelities -- dolls that
| played music or drew a picture (just according to their
| mechanical "programming") rather than something that actually
| did useful work, let alone flexible work.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yeah the idea of a "mechanical man" is as old as written
| history
|
| Davinci even had a pretty thorough idea
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_robot
| 1-more wrote:
| > But surely the idea of a mechanical man predates the term,
| robot. Automatons?
|
| Greek myth has Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans) making a bunch
| of robots. Talos was a giant humanoid guardian of Crete made of
| bronze. I can't remember the names of his forge workers, but
| there were two of them and they worked with him pumping bellows
| and hammering metal.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Galatea is a marble statue which the sculptor falls in love
| with. The statue is then animated by Aphrodite.
| trusz wrote:
| In Hungary we've learn about robot "jobs" in school. I am no
| expert but in serfdoms the peasants, who owned fields, had to
| work on the field of the lords for free. [1] I could only found
| the hungarian wiki page: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igas_robot
| We have used the exact word "robot" in hungarian.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > whose research interests arguably make her one of the most
| qualified people to write about Capek's perspective on robots.
| "The chemical robots in the form of microparticles that we
| designed and investigated, and that had properties similar to
| living cells, were much closer to Capek's original ideas than any
| other robots today," Cejkova explains in the book's introduction
|
| This doesn't sound right at all. The play's about synthetic
| humans taking over from humans and falling in love, not tiny
| chemical robots.
| lolinder wrote:
| Keep reading to the extract from Capek himself. The primary
| thing that he emphasizes about his robots is that they were
| biological in nature, and the primary thing he disliked about
| where they went from there is that robots became a word that
| referred to mechanical technology. The scale of the robots
| didn't matter to him as much as the fact that they
| _specifically_ were not mechanical.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Possibly that's because the scale wasn't changed. If you can
| imagine the plot being less changed by microscopic chemical
| (not biological even) machines than by the human-sized and
| shaped things being made of metal, not organics, then fair
| enough, but I can't.
| Throw84949 wrote:
| Another irony is Capek did not really liked R.U.R. He was great
| author and journalist, read his War with the Newts (1936). RUR
| was his early theater game, it is a bit silly and has big plot
| holes.. Yet somehow it is his most known work.
| ceceron wrote:
| War with the Newts is wonderful, though The Absolute at Large
| is also worth of attention :)
| thriftwy wrote:
| > when he recently read that, in Moscow, they have shot a major
| film, in which the world is trampled underfoot by mechanical
| robots, driven by electromagnetic waves
|
| I wonder what's the IMDB id of that...
| romanhn wrote:
| Pretty sure it's this: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0240539/
|
| Has a Wikipedia page with the full movie embedded!
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_Sensation
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| It's interesting that Philip K. Dick's androids from _Do Androids
| Dream of Electric Sheep?_ and the Replicants from the _Blade
| Runner_ are way closer to Capek's robots than to mechanical
| humanlike contraptions. All three raise the same question -- what
| is humanity, when you really get down to it?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Dildog posted a meme on this topic recently on Mastodon:
|
| A group of monks sit around the Buddha.
|
| Monk: Buddha, what makes us human?
|
| Buddha: Selecting all images with traffic lights.
|
| https://hackers.town/@dildog/111644483541067122
| neuromanser wrote:
| Sorry for an intellectually vacuous comment, but: Wow!
| Somehow this hit way harder than I was ready for!
| jhbadger wrote:
| And the (non-Dick) movie sequel 2049 makes it even closer given
| how it is revealed that (some) replicants, just like some of
| Capek's robots, can become pregnant and give birth just like
| humans, allowing them to continue without humans manufacturing
| them.
| shmerl wrote:
| It was cool to find references to Capek in Des Ex: Mankind
| Divided that takes place in Prague.
| blendergeek wrote:
| dang, can we change the title back to the original. This article
| is about "the man who the word robot" not "a man who coined the
| word robot". I know that often "the man" is used for clickbait
| purposes. Here it is just being accurate and to the point. The
| title being used now suggests that many people have coined the
| word robot which is untrue.
| lolinder wrote:
| Mods don't get pinged when you use their name, to raise an
| issue you'll want to click Contact in the footer.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I wonder when the english (at least American english)
| pronunciation of robot changed? I sometimes listen to old radio
| dramas as I fall asleep and the older the show the more likely
| they are to say "row butt" instead of "row bot."
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Isaac Asimov used to say "row butt" but I can't think of anyone
| else who did/does.
| lajy wrote:
| The narrator on many episodes of How It's Made says "row
| butt"
| madeofpalk wrote:
| When I think about old fashiony ways to pronounce robot, the
| only thing i think of is Zoidberg pronoucning it "rowbit"
| https://youtu.be/mh5NSmVs_uk?t=26
| JohnFen wrote:
| I know more than a few people who pronounce it "row butt"
| today. I think it's a regional US dialect thing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-22 23:01 UTC)