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March 26, 2020 [OT] @grammar | ||||
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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 |
March 26, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Steven Schveighoffer | 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.
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March 26, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Steven Schveighoffer | 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 |
March 27, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Steven Schveighoffer | 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).
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March 30, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Steven Schveighoffer | 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
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March 30, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to 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
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March 30, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Ali Çehreli | 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
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March 30, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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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. |
March 31, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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Posted in reply to Jonathan M Davis | 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
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March 31, 2020 Re: [OT] @grammar | ||||
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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 |
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