Monday Morning: Git Workflow Vocabulary 🌅
Happy Monday! This week we’re kicking off with Technical English — today’s focus is a set of words every developer uses in standup and PR reviews but rarely stops to pronounce or explain out loud: Git workflow vocabulary.
🌟 Word of the Day: Rebase
IPA Pronunciation: /riːˈbeɪs/
Vietnamese: dời lại các commit lên một nền commit mới (thường dùng thay vì merge để giữ lịch sử commit gọn gàng)
3 Example Sentences:
- “Can you rebase your branch onto main before we merge? There’s a conflict in the config file.”
- “I always rebase instead of merge on feature branches — it keeps the commit history linear and easy to read.”
- “Don’t rebase a branch that other people have already pulled — you’ll rewrite shared history and cause chaos.”
Learn more:
- Cambridge Dictionary — rebase
- YouGlish — hear “rebase” in real videos
- Git Rebase, explained — freeCodeCamp (YouTube)
📚 Vocabulary Table: Git Workflow
| Phrase | Vietnamese | Example |
|---|---|---|
| cherry-pick | lấy riêng một commit cụ thể sang nhánh khác | ”We only need that one bug fix — let’s cherry-pick the commit instead of merging the whole branch.” |
| stash | tạm cất thay đổi chưa commit sang một chỗ khác | ”I’m not done with this feature yet, but I need to switch branches — let me stash my changes first.” |
| squash | gộp nhiều commit thành một commit duy nhất | ”Before you open the PR, squash those 12 ‘WIP’ commits into one clean commit.” |
| force-push | đẩy code lên, ghi đè lịch sử trên remote | ”After rebasing, you’ll need to force-push — just make sure no one else is working on that branch.” |
| bisect | chia đôi lịch sử commit để tìm commit gây lỗi | ”We used git bisect to find exactly which commit introduced the memory leak.” |
🗣️ Pronunciation Guide
Let’s break down rebase /riːˈbeɪs/ syllable by syllable:
- re- → /riː/ — like the note “re” in do-re-mi, but held slightly longer
- -base → /beɪs/ — rhymes with “case” and “face,” NOT with “us” — the stress falls here, on the second syllable
⚠️ Common mistake: Vietnamese speakers often stress the first syllable (“REE-base”) — but native speakers stress the second: “ree-BASE.”
Practice sentence — read this out loud 3 times:
“I need to rebase this branch before I cherry-pick that fix and squash my commits.”
Say it slowly the first time, focus on stress the second time, then read it at natural speed the third time.
✍️ Exercises
Exercise 1: Fill in the blank
- “This branch is way behind main — let’s ______ it before opening the PR.” (rebase)
- “I don’t want the whole feature, just that one fix — can you ______ commit
a3f21?” (cherry-pick) - “I have uncommitted changes but need to pull the latest code — let me ______ them first.” (stash)
Show Answers
- rebase
- cherry-pick
- stash
Exercise 2: Translate to English
- “Chúng ta cần dời lại nhánh này lên main trước khi merge.”
- “Sau khi rebase, bạn cần force-push để cập nhật remote.”
- “Hãy gộp các commit lại thành một trước khi mở pull request.”
Show Answers
- “We need to rebase this branch onto main before merging.”
- “After rebasing, you need to force-push to update the remote.”
- “Let’s squash the commits into one before opening the pull request.”
💬 Idiom of the Day: “Clean up your act”
Vietnamese meaning: chỉnh đốn lại, làm cho gọn gàng / nghiêm túc hơn (thường dùng khi ai đó cần cải thiện thói quen làm việc)
Examples:
- “Our commit history is a mess — time to clean up our act and start squashing before every PR.”
- “The tech lead told the team to clean up their act after three production incidents in one week.”
📺 Recommended Watching
- Git Rebase vs Merge — The Modern Coder (YouTube)
- YouGlish: “rebase” in real developer talks
- Fireship — Git in 100 seconds (YouTube)
🎯 Today’s Challenge
Next time you rebase a branch in real life, say the command out loud as you type it: “I’m going to re-BASE this branch onto main.” Saying technical vocabulary out loud while you use it is one of the fastest ways to make pronunciation automatic.
See you this evening for practice! 🚀