Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 17:26:00 -0800 From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi Asami) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk, fenner@parc.xerox.com, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT Message-ID: <199603230126.RAA10970@sunrise.cs.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: <22389.827542080@time.cdrom.com> (jkh@time.cdrom.com)
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* [Redirected to -chat since I don't think that the CVS committers particularly * want to join in what could be a protracted grammatical discussion :-)] (Ok, but don't take me off the CC: list, I'm not on -chat) * FWIW, I've never seen "an unit" used anywhere on this side of the * pond. Our english teacher taught us (way back in the late 70's) that * `an' be used in front of words starting a, e, i or o. We never * learned it as a general rule for vowels (especially since u and * sometimes y fit that category, and you'd never say "an uniform" or "an * yankee"). haha | v Hmm. I always thought it's the pronounciation. If a `u' is pronounced like a `you', as in `unit' (`you-knit'), it's a consonant, and if it's pronounced like a weak `a', it's treated as a vowel as far as articles are concerned. What about `an unpleasent experience'? Do you say `a' here? Same for spelled-out consonants, like `X-rated' (ok ok stop laughing), I say `an X-rated movie', not `a'. Satoshi
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