"Dee-twenty." "Die-twenty."

Referents are used by common convention to REPLACE the terms they stand for, not as a reminder of where to insert them in conversation. When we read AK-47, we say ay-kay forty seven, not Avtomat Kalashnikova nineteen forty seven, right?

Same thing here. The only reason the convention arose is because DnD used different sided dice, and we needed a convention to help us rapidly differentiate between the various dice in play. What's important is not that you're rolling a dice, it's which one.

So, we replaced 'die or dice' with a D and the number of sides was tacked on. It's a super simple convention that gives all the information one might need. Just like AK-47, though, we don't pronounce the word that the D stands for.

/r/rpg Thread