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

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Message #35 received at 79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Joost Kremers <joostkremers <at> fastmail.fm>
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 10:14:40 +0300

> From: Joost Kremers <joostkremers <at> fastmail.fm>
> Cc: stephen.berman <at> gmx.net,  79469 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 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.

You are saying that English pronunciation is determined by something
beyond the spelling?

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