4 ms·

I must be younger than you. Have always thought 'email' just looks and feels better... but you make good points! Maybe it has something to do with frequency of

I must be younger than you. Have always thought 'email' just looks and feels better... but you make good points! Maybe it has something to do with frequency of use? "email"/"e-mail" must be used much more (and in more contexts - informal, formal, verbal, professional...) than the other examples you gave, so perhaps over time it was "slangified" and the hyphen dropped?

bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
I have slipped into calling email "mail" and real mail "snail mail".
adamomada 4y ago
If I were to make a bet I’d say it’s because e happens to be a vowel. It makes email look like a proper word. If it was instead fmail (for whatever reason) I think you’d still see a hyphen
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  >If it was instead fmail (for whatever reason) I think you’d still see a hyphen I thing “gmail” is the counter example.
  - rdlw 4y ago
    That's not a natural word, it's a brand. In that case, of course Google decided to make Gmail look more like a word, because they want it to look natural when it's used. For it to be a counterexample, it would have to have occurred naturally at first and then lost the hyphen.
rosmax_1337 4y ago
Further on the topic of how words change: In swedish, we have lots of english loan words in our everyday vocabulary. (To the great dismay of some!) This has lead to the creation of the word "mejl", which comes from the swedish way of pronouncing email, where the "ai"-sound easily becomes a "ej"-sound, and later this has accentuated the prounciation of the word more and more. The word now is its own noun in our dictionary following the usual grammatical rules in swedish, for example: mejl - e-mail mejlet - the e-mail mejla - sending e-mail And it is also commonly used in compound words too. Like mejlkorg (e-mail bin), mejlkonversation (e-mail conversation), bluffmejl (hoax e-mail). I'm of the younger generation, and I quite like the way this works in swedish. "Mejl" to me seems like a thing in itself, rather than the two words electronic mail abbreviated.

bqmjjx0kac 4y ago

I have slipped into calling email "mail" and real mail "snail mail".

adamomada 4y ago

If I were to make a bet I’d say it’s because e happens to be a vowel. It makes email look like a proper word. If it was instead fmail (for whatever reason) I think you’d still see a hyphen

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
>If it was instead fmail (for whatever reason) I think you’d still see a hyphen I thing “gmail” is the counter example.
- rdlw 4y ago
  That's not a natural word, it's a brand. In that case, of course Google decided to make Gmail look more like a word, because they want it to look natural when it's used. For it to be a counterexample, it would have to have occurred naturally at first and then lost the hyphen.

rosmax_1337 4y ago

Further on the topic of how words change: In swedish, we have lots of english loan words in our everyday vocabulary. (To the great dismay of some!) This has lead to the creation of the word "mejl", which comes from the swedish way of pronouncing email, where the "ai"-sound easily becomes a "ej"-sound, and later this has accentuated the prounciation of the word more and more. The word now is its own noun in our dictionary following the usual grammatical rules in swedish, for example: mejl - e-mail mejlet - the e-mail mejla - sending e-mail And it is also commonly used in compound words too. Like mejlkorg (e-mail bin), mejlkonversation (e-mail conversation), bluffmejl (hoax e-mail). I'm of the younger generation, and I quite like the way this works in swedish. "Mejl" to me seems like a thing in itself, rather than the two words electronic mail abbreviated.