[…] each glyph has its own monosyllabic name, designed to be pronounced quickly in combination with another glyph to form a rune name. As languages are often read-aloud, this saves the programmer from having to say “dollar sign, question mark”–“bucwut” is much more compact.

– Hoon documentation

Because Hoon uses ASCII symbols so heavily (there is some resemblance to Perl or even the APL family, although Hoon is more regular than both), it presents a serious vocalization problem. To aid in speaking Hoon – both for actual communication, and to assist in subvocalized reading – we have our own one-syllable names for ASCII tokens

– Urbit: A Solid-State Interpreter

The following pronunciation listing is directly from “Phonetic names for symbols” (Listing 3 from the Urbit whitepaper).

Symbol Pronounciation
[1 space] ace
[>1 space] gap
! zap
" doq
# hax
$ buc
% cen
& pam
* tar
+ lus
- hep
, com
. dot
/ fas
\ bas
: col
; sem
< gal
= tis
> gar
? wut
@ pat
( pal
) par
[ sel
] ser
{ kel
} ker
^ ket
_ cab
| bar
~ sig
‘ tec
’ soq

Irregular pronuncations

To avoid a few tongue-twisters, some runes have irregular pronunciations that should be noted

– Hoon documentation

Symbol Irregular Pronounciation Original pronounciation
-- phep hephep
+- slep lushep
++ slus luslus
== stet tistis