How to pronounce "parser" and "parsing"?
July 15, 2024 11:57 AM   Subscribe

I've been having a friendly debate with my brother over how to pronounce those words. I use a "z" sound for the "s" and he's never heard that before. He thinks maybe software developers (like myself) tend to use that pronunciation. I don't know where I picked it up, it could be from other IT people. He claims that an "s" sound is the correct way to say it. I claim that we're both right and neither is incorrect. AITA?
posted by TreeHugger to Education (43 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
For me it's definitely the "s" sound, and I've used it in workplace / career for decades.
posted by intermod at 11:59 AM on July 15, 2024 [36 favorites]


Start polling the people in your life on how they pronounce the word greasy.

My parents grew up less than 20 miles from one another with family in the same area going back generations. Mom says gree-see, dad says greezy.

Neither is wrong. Welcome to the English language.
posted by phunniemee at 12:01 PM on July 15, 2024 [3 favorites]


I have only heard and used it with the ‘s’ sound.
posted by janell at 12:01 PM on July 15, 2024 [14 favorites]


never heard it with a “z”, only an unvoiced “s”.

doesn’t sound like there is an asshole in this situation though even if one of you (probably you) is wrong
posted by cabbage raccoon at 12:02 PM on July 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


Actually, one of you is incorrect.
posted by Rash at 12:03 PM on July 15, 2024 [13 favorites]


Assuming that you know others who say it the way you do, linguists would say you are both right - regional or cultural variations are valid.

Oxford Dictionary says it has a soft s (not a z) sound and that is what I, an American nonprogrammer have heard all my life so I'm guessing your brother's way is more common.
posted by metahawk at 12:04 PM on July 15, 2024 [4 favorites]


I’ve only ever heard or used an “s”, never a “z”.
posted by penguin pie at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2024 [5 favorites]


regional or cultural variations are valid

But personal variations are not. Sure, you can pronounce words any way you want to, but if nobody else is in on the joke you're not really communicating. Not effectively, anyway.
posted by Rash at 12:08 PM on July 15, 2024 [9 favorites]


Only ever hear and use unvoiced hard 's'. I learned and heard this word from lots of computer science and math people in the US, since the 90s. Also my linguistics and English teachers too. Even people who learned it in China or India or UK or AU.

Yes, "correctness" of a pronunciation is a moving target in descriptive linguistics, but since none of us have ever heard it pronounced as you do (yet), I suggest that you're in a small minority, and risk problems of intelligibility if you don't adopt the commonly used pronunciation.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:10 PM on July 15, 2024 [3 favorites]


To me, parse rhymes with farce; my software career has spanned NYC and the midwestern US.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:10 PM on July 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


I’ve never heard it with a Z and I have a lot of programmers in my life.
posted by Stacey at 12:11 PM on July 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I'm a British software developer; I say parse, parser and parsing all with a "z" sound, and have never (knowingly) heard them pronounced any other way.

The Chambers dictionary gives the "z" pronunciation first, "s" second.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:17 PM on July 15, 2024 [7 favorites]


Another vote for "I have only ever heard those words pronounced with an S sound." I'm from the west coast of the US.
posted by peperomia at 12:23 PM on July 15, 2024


I've been a database developer for 26 years and have only ever used and heard it pronounced with an "s".
posted by mezzanayne at 12:23 PM on July 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


Team S here.
posted by Alensin at 12:25 PM on July 15, 2024


Do you pronounce "parsley" with a /z/ too? I've noticed some people do. Merriam-Webster uses the unvoiced /s/ sound for both in American English, though, which is the only way I've ever heard "parse" or "parser" among both linguists and programmers in the US.
posted by wintersweet at 12:27 PM on July 15, 2024


Merriam-Webster gives the "s" pronunciation as preferred and says the "z" is chiefly British.

I'm American and have never heard the "z."
posted by FencingGal at 12:27 PM on July 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


I've heard it both ways (British). It's sometimes pronounced like 'pause' and 'pausing' (the 's', not the whole word).
posted by pipeski at 12:28 PM on July 15, 2024


I say "parsley" with an "s" and "parse" with a "z". U.S., scientist but not computer scientist.
posted by LadyOscar at 12:46 PM on July 15, 2024


Datum: Z in my expensive education middle-class southern brit accent / upbringing.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:53 PM on July 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


American, tech-adjacent, I started out my career in IT and now talk to techies with a global variety of accents as part of my job, and my dad's been a developer his entire 50+ year career so I grew up listening to Bay Area techies talking. I've never heard parse, parser, or parsing pronounced with a "z" sound; whether your pronunciation reflects some kind of regionalism or personal affect, I feel pretty safe asserting that your brother's hypothesis about this being a coder thing holds no water.

I will admit that I picked up using "Cheers" as my email signoff from my Mancunian sysadmin in an early career job because I thought the typical corporate signoff of "Best" was ridiculous. But said Manchester native never said "parzing!"
posted by Pandora Kouti at 12:58 PM on July 15, 2024


Another chiming in here with "s" mostly - I work with programmers all around the world and hear it almost every day. I have heard the "Z" version, but it's rare, and seems to be an individual thing rather than some regional version (IMO).
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:05 PM on July 15, 2024


I pronounce parse with a soft s like parsimonious. Only way I have heard it pronounced on multiple international teams.
posted by nickggully at 1:23 PM on July 15, 2024


To me, parse rhymes with farce; my software career has spanned both of these.
posted by Phssthpok at 1:33 PM on July 15, 2024 [3 favorites]


"Parse" like "farce" or "arse" or "parsimony", never heard any other way. However, because of this thread I checked in a few dictionaries and the "parz" pronunciation is given as a British variant, so it is a thing.

(Dictionaries are not a bad place to look for this sort of debate, though they only list the major variants.)
posted by trig at 1:33 PM on July 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


The word comes from Latin pars "a part, piece" by way of the Middle English word pars, which also meant a part.

But you know what's fun about Latin? There are TWO official pronunciations, Classical and Ecclesastical Latin. So even if I tell you that there is evidence it was being said with an s sound in 1300CE, or that it was being said with an s when the Praetorian Guard was auctioning off the position of Emperor of Rome to the highest bidder, someone else could potentially provide a good argument that people were pronouncing it with a z sound that far back too. It all depends on what rhymes and puns from those eras we are able to document to prove our point.

I think you will find that people who have a regional accent that is more nasal will say it slightly more towards a z than people with that regional trait. If you come from a Gaelic background, or a French one, your s's will have the more nasal sound that makes them sound like z's. For some people hearing that z will sound like they are listening to a snooty upper class British voice, for others it will sound like backwater Appalachian, and for still other people it will sound like glamorous Parisian chic. The z sound is more BBC than it is Los Angeles. New York leans towards a z sound.

There are more people who speak English that hiss their s's than there are people who buzz them. If the z sound is used specifically by certain programmers than likely they were influenced by earlier high status programmers who influenced them and who pronounced it that way. It would be fascinating to research a programmer group that uses the z sound and find out if they started pronouncing it that way because the had a mentor who was British, or a mentor who had been taught to buzz their s's because they were trained in radio procedures, and a z sound is easier to distinguish on a bad line full of static than the softer s one is.

As far as I am concerned anyone who claims that there is one correct way to pronounce things is a.) wrong and b.) setting themself up to be a gatekeeper to exclude other people and c.) doesn't understand that language is a steadily evolving thing and that there are words that are now being pronounced differently in 2024 than they were in 1974, or even d.) doesn't have the auditory acuity to understand that the sounds we produce vary in minute ways not only from person to person, but that even a given individual doesn't pronounce things the same way consistently.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:46 PM on July 15, 2024 [5 favorites]


I have not heard software developers ever pronounce it that way. If you're American, this would come off as an affectation.
posted by ch1x0r at 3:21 PM on July 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


After skimming a dozen or so YouTube videos, it seems to me that it's primarily (and possibly only?) British speakers who use a "z" sound in "parsing". Everyone else I found using the "s" sound -- mainly North American speakers but also Indian English speakers and people who learned English as a foreign language.
posted by mhum at 4:43 PM on July 15, 2024


Wow, I've never heard it with a "z". Raised in the US, have now lived in NZ for a couple of decades... my work is IT-adjacent but I've largely worked with US nationals, so I'm not sure I've ever discussed parsing with a native kiwi. I'll have to poll my social circle (mostly white anglophones from various parts of the world) about this!

NAH unless one of you is doubling down and insisting that there is only one correct pronunciation ever.
posted by inexorably_forward at 4:52 PM on July 15, 2024


Native Kiwi here...

Although I'm "IT people", I first encountered 'parse' when learning Latin in days of yore.

Was always a 'z' sound then and the many different workplaces I've encountered since.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 5:49 PM on July 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


I’ve always heard the s in the US, but I kind of like the idea of the z — a parzer sounds like a weapon or occupation in an early 90s Cyberpunk novel. So let your X flag fly, I say.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:41 PM on July 15, 2024


Whoa! I say parSe meaning "parse a sentence" and I don't think I've ever heard parZe !
Canadian, grew up with lots of influence from Silent Generation Brits.

I have zero interaction with the word in a software context.
I just use it / hear it occasionally to mean "make sense of" or "deconstruct".
I also say parSley but I hear lots of perZons say parZley as well, perZonally.

But never parZe, my mind is actually a bit blown by that!!! Put that in your purZe and peruZe it.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:35 PM on July 15, 2024


American computer scientist here; I’ve never heard it pronounced with a “z”.
posted by ellenaim at 10:45 PM on July 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


Australian (no tech in my career!) and I have only ever heard the z version.
posted by jojobobo at 12:17 AM on July 16, 2024


I say s but have heard both s and z in the UK. Pleased how clean the division of responses is. Parsley has an s here, however.
posted by lokta at 12:24 AM on July 16, 2024


Australia, Z.

Those of us with non-rhotic accents need the Z to keep "parse" distinct from "pass", especially in programming contexts where both those words are things that could happen to the same item.
posted by flabdablet at 2:23 AM on July 16, 2024 [2 favorites]


If you can still parze what each other are saying with both pronunciations, does it even matter?

(Australia, S. Parse rhymes with Arse)
posted by are-coral-made at 3:44 AM on July 16, 2024


NTA. I say “parse” to rhyme with “cars” where there’s a z-ish sound at the end. Maybe that is what “unvoiced s“ means? I also have a US southern accent so all bets are off.
posted by LoraT at 5:22 AM on July 16, 2024


Maybe that is what “unvoiced s“ means?

The opposite. Voicing means your vocal cords are engaged while you're making the sound.

So for example if you make an "sss" sound, air is coming out of your body through your teeth, but your vocal cords aren't doing anything.

But if you make a "zzz" sound air is still coming out of your body through your teeth, but this time it's also going through your vocal cords. If you put a finger on your throat you'll feel the difference: "zzz" makes your throat vibrate, while "sss" doesn't.

There are a lot of pairs of consonant sounds where your tongue, lips, teeth and so on are doing the same things but one consonant is voiced and the other unvoiced. In English there's "b" versus "p", "d" versus "t", "v" versus "f", "th" as in "thin" versus "th" as in "then", "sh" versus "zh" (like the "si" in "confusion", "ch" versus soft "g", "k" versus hard "g". (The article above goes into more nuanced detail.)

For fun try whispering a sentence or two and notice how whispering actually turns the voiced consonants into unvoiced ones.
posted by trig at 6:16 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]


Unvoiced s is as in ice, pass, lace, fights.
The equivalent voiced sound is z as in jazz, choose, freeze, hours.

(In the "Da Bears"/Superfans sketch from SNL part of what's supposed to be funny is that they're pronouncing "bears" with unvoiced s at the end--in the video you can hear the excessive hissing--instead of the standard z as in hours or shares.)
posted by wintersweet at 6:18 AM on July 16, 2024 [1 favorite]


Is she saying "toascht"?
posted by flabdablet at 7:07 AM on July 16, 2024


Interesting, grew up in Ireland so definitely no stranger to British English, studied computer engineering in Ireland and worked in the US and I have only heard it pronounced with an s sound, not z
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:38 AM on July 17, 2024


Irish accents are rhotic as well, so that fits.
posted by flabdablet at 4:37 AM on July 17, 2024 [1 favorite]


« Older Ford gearbox is dying, now what?   |   List of all the times Trump and other Republicans... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments