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)
index | next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail
* [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
help
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199603230126.RAA10970>