Yeah - I used delineate as opposed to differentiate, because although my thinking may have been wrong - I had a situation in which I was talking about two totally different entities- a man and an herb - as opposed to differentiating between two objects of the same form of being.
No, Aidan, your thinking clearly was not wrong.
Quote:
THE LANGUAGE POLICE: A reader writes, apropos my gender/sex point:
...
Ah, people say, but the trouble is that the lay public -- the actual users of the language -- will screw things up. One objection is that they'll let various inelegant usages into the language, but that is a tough basis on which to make one's argument. So another objection is that they'll "erase distinctions," which I take it means deprive us of what were once clear and useful terms.
On closer inspection, though, most (I don't mean to say all, but most) examples of these erased distinctions end up being rather unpersuasive.
That is an interesting question. My theory is that 'herb' came from Latin (herba) in which the initial 'h' is pronounced, whereas hotel came much later, from French, in which language the initial 'h' is not pronounced. It used to be an upper/middle class thing to drop the 'h' from 'hotel'.
I think it comes down to how you deal with weakly pronounced 'h's
Many Americans write and say "an historian", as a Google search will reveal.
That makes sense - I know it sounds better to my ear to use 'an' with hotel as well as historian now - but I'm not sure if that's just because I've heard it so much. I was saying it aloud to myself and it sounds very awkward to my ear now to say, 'I went to 'a' hotel - even when I stress the intial h.
The once fashionable French pronunciation point is a good one.
In my parents' generation, some people pronounced garage and envelope in the French way, but few do it now.
Same with hotel, I think.
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OmSigDAVID
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Tue 14 Jul, 2009 11:40 pm
@aidan,
aidan wrote:
Quote:
That is an interesting question. My theory is that 'herb' came from Latin (herba) in which the initial 'h' is pronounced, whereas hotel came much later, from French, in which language the initial 'h' is not pronounced. It used to be an upper/middle class thing to drop the 'h' from 'hotel'.
I think it comes down to how you deal with weakly pronounced 'h's
Many Americans write and say "an historian", as a Google search will reveal.
That makes sense - I know it sounds better to my ear to use 'an' with hotel as well as historian now - but I'm not sure if that's just because I've heard it so much. I was saying it aloud to myself and it sounds very awkward to my ear now to say, 'I went to 'a' hotel - even when I stress the intial h.
I can tell you this: in American street slang, to say 'herb' with the h not silent (i.e. pronounced as the masculine name) means that you are talking about marijuana. All other 'erbs have the silent 'h'. Trust me on this ; I dealt with teenagers off the streets of Greater Boston for more than a dozen years.
I know - but I'm sure that's not the 'herb' David uses- I'm just interested to find out if he pronounces the initial h or not - given that he says 'h's are not silent'
*just busting your chops David - I want to hear your 'reasoning' on this.... (and make sure it's constant (consistent) you know what I mean- because the facts haven't changed....
