I feel for non-English speakers

[Omenainen]

They're not actually exceptions though. 'A' precedes consonant sounds, 'an' precedes vowel sounds. 'Unique' starts with the consonantal sound you, 'honest' starts with the vowel sound ä. They're exceptions to the rule that 'a' precedes consonants and 'an' precedes vowels, but that's a misteaching.

Where there's difficulty, as we covered in the other thread, are situations where words have multiple correct pronunciations. Most of these are voiced versus silent 'h' sounds. And there the article is determined by how the word is pronounced.

Ah, but ä most definitely don’t have anything to do with all that. Ä is a perfectly respectable vowel.

Agreed. Finnish is the Final Boss of grammar

Finnish is the best language! No gendered pronouns! No gendered anything! No silly little words to stuff in all the sentences to add to the word count without contributing any meaning. Okay, almost any meaning. To have gazillion forms for a cat seems like a sensible trade off for me.

 

[Dodola]

@Writer61
Gotcha

I think it's probably pronounced the same, though, so we're good.

 

[TheLobster]

No silly little words to stuff in all the sentences to add to the word count without contributing any meaning.

But that's the best part of writing in English! It's so much more impressive to say you wrote 1000 words today, even if half of those were 'the', 'a', 'I', 'he', 'she' and 'of', than to settle on mere 500-600.

It's kind of like the imperial system. You gotta be pretty strong to bench three digits kilograms, but it's so much easier in pounds!

 

[YmaOHyd]

But that's the best part of writing in English! It's so much more impressive to say you wrote 1000 words today, even if half of those were 'the', 'a', 'I', 'he', 'she' and 'of', than to settle on mere 500-600.

It's kind of like the imperial system. You gotta be pretty strong to bench three digits kilograms, but it's so much easier in pounds!

Given the number of threads lately about a or an and you versus I, he and she, I'd saying using those correctly is pretty impressive!

 

[KittyOfSteele]

But that's the best part of writing in English! It's so much more impressive to say you wrote 1000 words today, even if half of those were 'the', 'a', 'I', 'he', 'she' and 'of', than to settle on mere 500-600.

You will not believe this.

Fingers of the feet > Toes.

 

[TheLobster]

Fingers of the feet > Toes.

Totally. It took me a long time to internalize that feet apparently don’t have fingers.

But then you could also go the other way around and call gloves “hand boots,” like the Germans

 

[SandraMaus]

Clearly, hack here is to make all your characters, including narrator, recent immigrants from Slavic speaking country, and have them all speak like Bond villains with no articles at all.



Yeah, I mean, it could be worse. To be honest a/an is not the hardest rule in English. Actually, English grammar is reasonably regular - it's the same auxiliary verb for all verbs, unlike French where you have to learn which ones take être and which avoir. The future forms are really easy, and the progressive aspect doesn't have any irregulars, while irregulars in the past tense tend to follow patterns. It's the spelling and pronunciation that's really screwy about English.

We have plenty of those "umfahren" could mean I drive wide around you or I drive over you,run you over. " Gerade" is straight or straight line or just now/this moment

 

[Pabiporffor]

Bah humbug. You people don't even know you're born. Try Welsh and then you've the right to bitch.

Can't cope with a turning to an? Try mutations. A simple word like car can change into gar, char, nghar. Parti into barti, mharti, pharti. Sure there's rules, dozens of them and plenty of people ready to point out your errors. (Sshh I fecked up the mutation in my name)

Then nouns are gendered and that change how you use numbers and colours. (3)Tri or tair, (2) dau or dwy. (White) Gwyn or wen. Good luck remembering them.

Go type a verb in Google translate. Take prynu (to buy) as an example. There's prynwch, prynais, pryniff, and dozens more depending on who's doing the action past, present or future

Then words merge. Forget easy shit like would not becoming wouldn't. We can join words such as baswn (would) and like (hoffi) to make hoffwn plus many more combos.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Bah humbug. You people don't even know you're born. Try Welsh and then you've the right to bitch.

For example, here's what happens when you try to use pronouns in Welsh! Have fun with soft nasal aspirant mutations!

 

[Writer61]

But then you could also go the other way around and call gloves “hand boots,” like the Germans

Or hand shoes in Dutch. Still struggling with that one.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I have no idea, but that is the correct description of an infusion that does not include actual tea (Camellia Sinesis).

Tisane. I will accept the use of the common term 'herbal tea' for a non-tea infusion, but it is crucial not to call such things simply 'tea'.

I have read too many stories where a foreign author has correctly used "l'll make you a nice cup of tea" to someone in a crisis, and then returns with a chamomile and/or lemon abomination. At which point the correct British response would be "What the fuck is this?" and depending on character, possibly throwing it at them.

I did once totally lose it, jet lagged, in severe pain, wishing for a cuppa but knowing I'd just landed in SF so until I got to someone's house it wasn't worth trying. Entered a building and there was a sign, Tea Exhibition. Twinings (a decent tea brand, not like Lipton's) had set up a stall in the foyer and proudly informed me they had over 200 types of tea and could make me one free. I scanned for something more interesting than English Breakfast.

It transpired they had over 200 'teas' but not one of them had ever met a tea plant. I may have given them a five minute lecture on false advertising before the spouse got me to sit down, and cope with a coffee and codeine instead.

 

[Writer61]

Tisane.

Thanks for spotting the typo.

Twinings (a decent tea brand, not like Lipton's)

I have to defend Lipton who worked quite hard to adapt their offerings to local taste, which often differed from the British palate.

It transpired they had over 200 'teas' but not one of them had ever met a tea plant. I may have given them a five minute lecture on false advertising before the spouse got me to sit down, and cope with a coffee and codeine instead.

I have been known to lecture on tea, too.

 

[TheLobster]

Tea these days means pretty much anything, from an afternoon snack to a piece of gossip, so I wouldn’t turn up my nose when ‘herbal tea’ at least refers to an actual hot water infusion.

 

[cw5523729]

I just needed something heated up and I would sort of wave the plate helplessly and go [in Spanish] "this...to need... more oven? Please?"

Damn, your Spanish is already better than mine. I would have been limited to "more hot"

With a rapido, rapido, tossed in

 

[Jorunn]

I believe our Finnish friends, with their eight hundred seventy two noun cases, might top the above list

I spent a couple months in Finland a few years ago helping a guy run dog sleds for the tourists. Despite a relative gift for language, I never made it past ‘advanced tourist’ level.

 

[Jorunn]

On my recent trip to Ireland, I found Irish to be a challenge, by even worse, was when they spoke English. There is so much slang and words that mean other things (to them).

 

[ColtonWrites]

Damn, your Spanish is already better than mine. I would have been limited to "more hot"

With a rapido, rapido, tossed in

The issue I have with simpler stuff like "more hot" is that I was conversational-level in French...15 years ago, and havent spoken a word since.
Often, when I am trying to remember a word in Spanish my brain will go "oh, you're trying to speak not-English!" and hand me the word in French and then get stuck. [Insert Janice-cactus.gif (The Good Place)].
So I often would forget "caliente" in favor of "chaud", because that was familiar, but not "el horno" because I can't even remember the word for "oven" in French.

Brains are weird.

 

[Writer61]

I spent a couple months in Finland a few years ago helping a guy run dog sleds for the tourists. Despite a relative gift for language, I never made it past ‘advanced tourist’ level.

I had a similar experience with Hungarian, which has a common root with Finnish.

 

[Lector77]

You will not believe this.

Fingers of the feet > Toes.

So then, according to the energetic babbler, lack of single word direct equivalence is problematic? Ok, try Br Pt saudade, not the peninsular variety. Or ensimismado en castellano. They lack one word English matches, but… So what? Good translators and interpreters manage quite well, não é?

 

[TheLobster]

Every language slices the semantic space differently. For each pair, you'll find words in one for which there exists no close equivalent in the other language.

English has pretty unique words, too. "Serendipity" is a common example; it's often cited as a concept with no ready analogues in other languages.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

So then, according to the energetic babbler, lack of single word direct equivalence is problematic? Ok, try Br Pt saudade, not the peninsular variety. Or ensimismado en castellano. They lack one word English matches, but… So what? Good translators and interpreters manage quite well, não é?

You're taking a comedian's jokes way too seriously.

 

[Inkognito1]

who are trying to write in this silly language. Today while editing, I changed a word to another that mean pretty much the same thing and are used interchangeably, but because I have, the indefinite article had to be changed. All because of the way it sounds, I think.

with a nervous cry, she -
vice
with an anxious cry, she -

How would a native of some other language, know these ridiculous things?

I have nothing but respect for anyone who can speak or write fluently in a language that isn’t their own. Doing it well is difficult enough that even online translators can still fumble the ball.

For example, even though I don't speak German, a few days ago, out of equal parts boredom and curiosity, I wandered into the German subforum while relying on the page translator to get the gist. I ended up replying to a thread, and since it was the German space, I wanted to be polite and respond in German rather than parachuting in with English. So I enlisted the help of an online translator.

Well, several of them in fact, because I wanted to be as accurate as possible, and I’m nothing if not thorough.

However, the problem I quickly noticed was that about half of them kept swapping two key words in my reply, completely changing what I was trying to say. And since I don’t speak the language, I had no idea which ones were correct. So there’s a very real chance that part of what I posted says something I didn’t mean at all.

At that point, though, all I could do was laugh and trust that context would act as damage control. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So yeah, major props to non-native English writers navigating a language where the rules are inconsistent and the exceptions are endless.

 

[TheArsonist]

Ugh, we had this talk already. It's a very simple rule and has no exceptions. And I say it as a non-native speaker.

It's been touched on but not outright stated: there are (optional) exceptions involving words that start with an h-sound, when the first syllable is unstressed. Some speakers will say and write "a history" but "an historical fact," even though they pronounce the h at the beginning of both words, and this is not considered incorrect. Some will even switch between "a historical" and "an historical" seemingly at random, though the choice is likely influenced by the context.

It's not a rule that can be generalized easily: "historical" is probably the most common word it applies to, but it can also be used with words like "hysterical," "hypothesis," "hospitable," "harmonious," "heroic," and "Hunterian." However, not in all cases: for example, it has historically nearly always been "a Hungarian."

According to Google n-gram the form "an historical" has been falling steadily since 1800 (when it was used 93% of the time) and is now used only about 10% of the time in written US English, about 20% in British English, and slightly more often in fiction.

 

[alohadave]

Ugh, we had this talk already. It's a very simple rule and has no exceptions. And I say it as a non-native speaker.

There are dialects of American English that do have different rules for this. Notably Black English or AAVE.

There is not one single English language. And the language is always shifting as usage changes it.

 

[TheLobster]

It's been touched on but not outright stated: there are (optional) exceptions involving words that start with an h-sound, when the first syllable is unstressed.

Nope, not an exception.

Unstressed syllables get their initial h reduced, making the preceding article smush into the subsequent vowel, but since two vowels dislike being next to each other in speech, you get the extra consonant that turns a into an (it's phenomenon that I'm pretty sure I named upthread, but it escapes me at the moment).

Similarly, "a Hungarian" needs to use a, because if you applied the same process there you'd end up with two stuttering n's.

To sum up, it's still not rocket science and it doesn't have exceptions; you just transcribe what you would've said.

There are dialects of American English that do have different rules for this. Notably Black English or AAVE.

Irrelevant. We're not talking about a particular affectation or vernacular that a character might exhibit (including the character of the narrator), but rather the standard dialect that most books are written in.