October 5th, 2007
Let's settle this -- is SOA pronounced Soah or Ess-oh-ay?
Should SOA officially be made a word?
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been hearing two pronunciations of SOA. One, of course, is the acronym, as in S-O-A. The other one that’s heard a lot is SOA as a word in itself, pronounced “Soah”.
S-O-A or Soah? You can help decide, once and for all
Anyone who has ever listened to Webcasts I have participated in, or heard me speak, will notice I tend to waffle between the use S-O-A. and soah. Which ever seems to flow at the moment, I guess. But, when writing, I hit a snag when need to write something to the effect of “Acme Widgets has just undertaken an SOA initiative.” Or should it be “a SOA initiative?”
Perhaps the use of “Soah” as a word confers some kind of “insider” status on the speaker. Just as you know that someone pronouncing an operating system as “U-N-I-X” is definitely way outside of the IT orbit.
Or, perhaps its just one less acronym to stumble over in the course of conversation — two syllables instead of three. Just as SOAP is actually an acronym, you never hear anybody talking about sending code with an “S-O-A-P header.” And “wizdel” definitely has more of a zing to it than spelling out “W-S-D-L.”
Should we all just settle on Soah? A new poll over at the ebizQ site seeks to settle this question once and for all — link to the poll here. (And yes, that’s my voice on the accompanying audio file.)
Word has it that the results are running 50-50 so far. Maybe the Soah/S-O-A question won’t be settled anytime soon after all. But we’d all love to hear how you’re pronouncing it these days.
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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