On Aug 29, 6:45 pm, Robert Dodier <robert.dod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > Usually "an" comes before a word that starts with a vowel, i.e a, e,
> > i, o, u. So one would say "an eight o'clock meeting" or "an 8 o'clock
> > meeting". More examples: an amphibian, an egg, an igloo, an octopus,
> > an umbrella. However, there are situations when this rule doesn't
> > apply. In software engineering, one uses UML diagrams as part of the
> > design process. Although this acronym starts with a capital "u", it's
> > pronounced and written as "a UML diagram" not "an UML diagram", just
> > as in "a ewe" not "an ewe".
>
> In American English at least (I just don't know about other varieties)
> it is typical to change some vowels into diphthongs, in particular to
> change initial u into iu instead. In iu, i acts as a semivowel,
> and it's typical to use the article "a" in front of a word beginning
> with iu, e.g. a unicorn. But e.g. "urn" doesn't have the initial
> semivowel,
> so the article is "an", so "an urn".
>
> The other semivowel (there might be still others, but I can't think
> of them at the moment) is w as in "one". As with semivocalic i,
> the article for semivocalic w is "a", e.g. a one-time deal.
>
Yes. And don't forget things like "an historical novel" versus "a
historical novel", depending on what part of the US you are from (no
idea for other parts). But at any rate, a versus an is purely
phonetic. At least in theory, there are also two pronunciations of
"the" (thee and thuh), depending on the same input. Thee angel, thuh
time.
Well, whatever; definitely no good algorithm! Especially in the land
of abbreviations and letters that mathematics is. Should we maybe use
other articles for other alphabets, ό α or א ה or something?
> In all varieties of English, there is a pretty broad gulf between
> orthography and pronunciation. (I don't know if the orthography was
> fixed ages ago and pronunciation continued to evolved, or if they
> were never really aligned to begin with.) In a fantasy world, you
> would see that urn has a different initial letter than unicorn, but
> for now you just have to listen to the pronunciation to figure out
> the appropriate article.
Orthography is horrible because so much of the vocabulary is from
Anglo-Saxon or old French, but we barely pronounce anything like
Icelandic. For a great example, see
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=enough
- a lot of initial "g"s became "y"s or disappeared, and I can only
assume the final g was originally pronounced that way since it still
is in German. Also, Isn't French another language whose pronunciation
is only related to orthography by very complicated or non-algorithmic
rules? Because it's still written like it was centures ago? I feel
like I've heard that somewhere. So English isn't unique like that,
though it's probably the only language you can really have a spelling
bee in :)
Anyway, interesting thread. I assume that there are no algorithms for
Chomskian transformational grammars in Sage yet, but maybe someone
should volunteer.
- kcrisman
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