I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:

"You should put an @safe tag on it"

which reads horribly to me:

"You should put an safe tag on it"

Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.

-Steve

On 26.03.20 16:24, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:
> 
> "You should put an @safe tag on it"
> 
> which reads horribly to me:
> 
> "You should put an safe tag on it"
> 
> Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.

I'm one of those people. I like to distinguish "@safe" from "safe", so I do read "@safe" as "at-safe".

Examples:

By design, a safe function cannot always be an @safe function.
Due to compiler bugs, an @safe function may not be a safe function.

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 11:24:01AM -0400, Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:
> 
> "You should put an @safe tag on it"
> 
> which reads horribly to me:
> 
> "You should put an safe tag on it"
> 
> Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.
[...]

I also read the @ as a "silent @". :-P

But I tend to ignore grammatical errors these days. I wouldn't survive very long online if I reacted to every grammatical error I came across on the Internet, y'know? ;-)


T

-- 
Talk is cheap. Whining is actually free. -- Lars Wirzenius

On Thursday, 26 March 2020 at 15:24:01 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:
>
> "You should put an @safe tag on it"
>
> which reads horribly to me:
>
> "You should put an safe tag on it"
>
> Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.
>

No, you're not alone. The an @safe also hurt my eyes, and I'm not even a native English speaker (French & German bilingual).

On Thursday, March 26, 2020 9:24:01 AM MDT Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:
>
> "You should put an @safe tag on it"
>
> which reads horribly to me:
>
> "You should put an safe tag on it"
>
> Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.

Actually, I'm surprised that anyone would effectively ignore the @. Personally, I definitely consider it to be at-safe and not safe, since it's @safe, not safe. And that's how I would refer to it in any verbal conversation.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 3/30/20 4:39 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> at-safe and not safe, since it's
> @safe, not safe. And that's how I would refer to it in any verbal
> conversation.
> 
> - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> 
> 

Same here.

While we're off-topic, let's talk about what scratches my ears most: “an his­toric event”. Nooo! :) My Turkishness requires sounding that 'h' well, so it should be "a historic event". :)

Ali

On Monday, March 30, 2020 6:31:35 PM MDT Ali Çehreli via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 3/30/20 4:39 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > at-safe and not safe, since it's
> > @safe, not safe. And that's how I would refer to it in any verbal
> > conversation.
> >
> > - Jonathan M Davis
>
> Same here.
>
> While we're off-topic, let's talk about what scratches my ears most: “an his­toric event”. Nooo! :) My Turkishness requires sounding that 'h' well, so it should be "a historic event". :)

Well, that stems from how it _used_ to not have the h sound (coming from the French word, histoire, which has no h sound), but yeah, given that history is definitely pronounced with an h in modern English, it should definitely be "a" history/historic/etc. and not "an" history/historic/etc. now. Some schools may still teach "an history" though. It can take a while for some of that stuff to shift.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 06:43:35PM -0600, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, March 30, 2020 6:31:35 PM MDT Ali Çehreli via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> > While we're off-topic, let's talk about what scratches my ears most: “an his­toric event”. Nooo! :) My Turkishness requires sounding that 'h' well, so it should be "a historic event". :)
> 
> Well, that stems from how it _used_ to not have the h sound (coming from the French word, histoire, which has no h sound), but yeah, given that history is definitely pronounced with an h in modern English, it should definitely be "a" history/historic/etc. and not "an" history/historic/etc. now. Some schools may still teach "an history" though. It can take a while for some of that stuff to shift.
[...]

I've never heard of anyone recommending "an history", but then again, hyper-correcting oneself is a known phenomenon in linguistics, where sometimes people retroactively reconstruct a supposedly more accurate / historical / etc form that actually never existed historically.


T

-- 
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

On Monday, 30 March 2020 at 23:39:17 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, March 26, 2020 9:24:01 AM MDT Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> I always look at @safe as the word "safe", not "at-safe". But I see a lot of people writing stuff like:
>>
>> "You should put an @safe tag on it"
>>
>> which reads horribly to me:
>>
>> "You should put an safe tag on it"
>>
>> Am I the only one who cringes to read this? I bite my tongue and don't respond normally, because I'm sure that people read it the other way.
>
> Actually, I'm surprised that anyone would effectively ignore the @. Personally, I definitely consider it to be at-safe and not safe, since it's @safe, not safe. And that's how I would refer to it in any verbal conversation.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

I interpret the '@' as referring to "attribute", i.e. attribute-safe as opposed to at-safe. Reading through this thread I see I'm in the minority :)

/Norm

On Monday, March 30, 2020 11:07:06 PM MDT H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 06:43:35PM -0600, Jonathan M Davis via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Monday, March 30, 2020 6:31:35 PM MDT Ali Çehreli via Digitalmars-d
>
> > wrote:
> [...]
>
> > > While we're off-topic, let's talk about what scratches my ears most: “an his­toric event”. Nooo! :) My Turkishness requires sounding that 'h' well, so it should be "a historic event". :)
> >
> > Well, that stems from how it _used_ to not have the h sound (coming from the French word, histoire, which has no h sound), but yeah, given that history is definitely pronounced with an h in modern English, it should definitely be "a" history/historic/etc. and not "an" history/historic/etc. now. Some schools may still teach "an history" though. It can take a while for some of that stuff to shift.
>
> [...]
>
> I've never heard of anyone recommending "an history", but then again, hyper-correcting oneself is a known phenomenon in linguistics, where sometimes people retroactively reconstruct a supposedly more accurate / historical / etc form that actually never existed historically.

It was taught that way when I was in elementary school in the 80's (at least where I went to school). If you do a search on it, it's clearly the case that at minimum, historical gets pronounced without an h in some accents and that it used to be more common to pronunce it that way. It's less clear if much of anyone would pronounce history without an h at this point or how recently it would have been common, though given its French origin, it's pretty much a given that it was pronounced that way at some point.

Regardless, I think that the rules are pretty clear in that if the h is pronounced at the beginning of a word, then its article should be a, and if the h is not pronounced, then it should be an. The issues with a vs an with words like history or historical therefore come primarily from changes in pronounciation over time and/or differences in pronunciation in different parts of the world. The English can't speak proper English like we Americans can after all. ;)

- Jonathan M Davis