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> Well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove. If you are going to teach the hoi polloi to write, and make an
by mannykannot 5y ago
> Well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove.
If you are going to teach the hoi polloi to write, and make an issue over spelling, this sort of thing seems predictable, though two centuries seems a long time for it to become noticable.
- dctoedt 5y agoI love the term "the hoi polloi." Yes, technically the English word the is redundant (because the Greek word hoi is also "the"). But the redundancy makes the term more-quickly understandable. From a UI/UX perspective — with the correct primary goal being not slavish brevity but service to the reader — here the redundancy is a good thing. (Cf. "ATM machine.")
- dunham 5y agoYeah, my pet theory is that English has naturally evolved to repeat the last word of acronyms to disambiguate them.