Re: Another dynamically linked documentation patch

[Tom Holroyd]

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, David Bateman wrote:

> Yeah, I always found that Aluminium/Aluminum one of the weirder changes
> in American English. Although some of the other simplifications make
> sense, that one in fact makes things inconsistent as you point out...

This ever so slightly touches on my area of expertise, so allow 
me to explain.

We have al-u-min-i-um vs alu-mi-num (see http://www.m-w.com/).

There are actually two changes. The syllabification above, in the 
case of the American version, doesn't really reflect the 
pronunciation, which is a-lu-mi-num. So the first change is that 
al-u has changed to a-lu. (The British pronunciation matches the 
syllabification.) As to the other change (dropping the i), you 
can see that it is the same sort of change: min-i to mi-num. That 
is, both changes take a VC pair and transform it into a CV pair. 
(C=consonant, V=vowel). It is well known from many studies of 
articulation that CV syllables are more stable and easier to say. 
Case in point: the Japanese language is composed entirely of
CV pairs (and bare Vs), and they can talk really rapidly as a 
result. Here's an English example: say "apt" over and over, as 
fast as you can. Very quickly, you will find yourself saying 
"tap" over and over.

So the simplifications in Al are consistent and normal. Look 
around and you'll see many other VC->CV changes. Of course, the 
way to resolve this is quite simple: spell it "aluminium" but 
pronounce it "aluminum". There's already no systematic relation 
between English spelling and pronunciation, so this shouldn't 
bother anybody. :-)

Just to keep this on topic (?), let me add my vote for single 
spaces after periods everywhere. If emacs can't handle that now, 
then I'm sure it can be changed so that it will.

Tom Holroyd, Ph.D.
"The fundamentally misconceived nature versus nurture debate should be
abandoned: child development is inextricably both." -- Louann Brizendine