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Aa lava? I always spelled it that way in undergrad. Now I’m curious. I guess one could argue without the accents it’s incorrect. But then we get into the pedant
by Waterluvian 2y ago
Aa lava? I always spelled it that way in undergrad. Now I’m curious. I guess one could argue without the accents it’s incorrect. But then we get into the pedantry of how most words are wrong as they’re mostly borrowed and mutate over time. No true Scotsman in the dictionary.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoAccents? It should be a'a. The only native English word with a phonemic glottal stop, uh-uh, includes it in the spelling, for obvious reasons. You could write ah-ah, or a-a, on that model, but this isn't done.
- Waterluvian 2y agoBut 'A'ā isn’t the right kind of correct either? I’ve seen it written in a lot of ways from Aa to A’a to ah-ah to 'A'ā. So which true way do we accept and why? And does it matter?
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> But 'A'ā isn’t the right kind of correct either? That preserves a bunch of information that can't exist in English regardless of how you write it. "Aa" does the opposite, erasing information that is critical to the pronunciation of the word. There is no way to read "aa" as being more than one syllable long.