The article mentions GNU, and it took me a long time until I found out that English speakers pronounce it "noo", "new" or similar. My native language routinely has four consonants in a row, sometimes more, and gn is a perfectly common consonant sequence so it never occurred to me that the GNU project could be pronounced as anything but gnu. Turns out English speakers intuitively drop the initial g, or often have to insert a pretty obvious vowel guh-noo style.
It's not entirely dropped, it's a glottal 'g' that manifests mostly as a slight pause instead of a sound, although you can often see the larynx movement.
It's because the animal is called a gnu and a lot of us heard of the animal way before we ever heard of GNU. Sometimes, part of me thinks GNU is pronounced like that because someone wanted to be an asshole.
That's why I (despite being an English speaker) have always pronounced it "g-new," not caring what was correct. Pronouncing it like the animal seems designed to cause unnecessary confusion. Reminds me of the MST3K skit where Mike told the bots he was a big fan of Noh Japanese theater.
