GNU bug report logs - #79469
31.0.50; Ungrammatical sentence from describe-function

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Message #32 received at 79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Joost Kremers <joostkremers <at> fastmail.fm>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: stephen.berman <at> gmx.net, 79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#79469: 31.0.50; Ungrammatical sentence from describe-function
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:09:51 +0200

On Fri, Sep 19 2025, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Joost Kremers <joostkremers <at> fastmail.fm>
>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>,  Stephen Berman <stephen.berman <at> gmx.net>,
>>   79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 00:46:53 +0200
>> 
>> > How's this?
>> 
>> > +                    (concat (if (string-match-p "\\`[aeiou]" (symbol-name type))
>> 
>> Potentially problematic, because not every word that starts with "u" gets
>> "an". And sometimes words starting with "h" also need "an".
>
> Right.  And how harder would it be to write a more generally correct
> function?

It's impossible if you only know the spelling of a word and not its
pronunciation, which is the case here. So you'd either have to hard-code a
bunch of exceptions, or go online and consult Wiktionary or some other
resource to get the pronunciation.

Which hardly seems worth the trouble...

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments

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