Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the

British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth

speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like "char"

and "soc", etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to

American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in newsgroup names

(especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more

often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh

wib'l/). The prefix meta may be pronounced /mee't*/;

similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/, zeta is

usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred metasyntacticvariables include blurgle, "eek", "ook", "frodo", and

"bilbo"; "wibble", "wobble", and in emergencies "wubble";

"banana", "tom", "dick", "harry", "wombat", "frog", fish,

and so on and on (see foo).