Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 16:25:03 +0000 (GMT) From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Cc: paul@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT Message-ID: <199603251625.QAA08863@tees> In-Reply-To: <199603230126.RAA10970@sunrise.cs.berkeley.edu> from "Satoshi Asami" at Mar 22, 96 05:26:00 pm
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In reply to Satoshi Asami who said > > * [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"). Hmm that's interesting, 'u' is definately a vowel, there are 5 vowels that's pretty much written in stone but it looks like some english teachers are changing the teaching of 'an' to not cover all vowels, making 'u' a special case. > 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. Yeah, that's what my little bit of research turned up which goes against what I was taught in school. Note that I had straight A grades for English when I left school which is not a claim that I know what I'm talking about but rather a claim that the expectations must have changed or I would have been getting things wrong at the time which I wasn't (about 12 years ago that would have been). > > 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'. Well, what we say and what correctly written English would be are rather different. I say 'an' a lot of times in speech when it would be wrong when written but I think that's what's happening anyway, spoken English is changing and written English is evolving to reflect that. English has always gone through this process, it's just interesting to be able to actually watch an aspect of this processes taking place. -- Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd. (Netcraft Ltd. contractor) Elsevier Science TIS online journal project. Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155
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