“I just chose words carefully” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#361

Post by JoshTriplett » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 5:11 AM UTC

throaway25498 wrote: post #360

JoshTriplett wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some UK speakers pronounce "H" as "haitch" (with a non-silent leading 'h'), not "aitch". Which leads to "a haitch tee ...". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H#Name

Not uncommon in Australia too. As a very ordinary General Australian speaker I use haitch (and therefore a, not an). I'm probably not 100% consistent in this. It's one of many words where Australian English permits two equally valid pronunciations (e.g. 'dance'). I do cringe when people insist on "an + h" where the h is in fact invariably pronounced, as in "an historic occasion". You only ever seem to hear this from…

> I do cringe when people insist on "an + h" where the h is in fact invariably pronounced, as in "an historic occasion".

Some people do in fact say "istoric", which seems largely like an affectation.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#362

Post by efskap » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 6:33 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #131

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

Ah, but I use a normal proportional font in my editor so same and diff have different widths. That was the fun comment. The serious ones: 1. I'm trading the ability to align statements on consecutive lines for a more pleasant reading experience. 2. Nobody ever complained that my source code is a = 1 ab = 2 abc = 3 instead of a = 1 ab = 2 abc = 3 3. No tables or diagrams in comments of course but I think that I could…

The best of both worlds would be achieved by elastic tabstops. https://nick-gravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

If only they took off.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#363

Post by b112 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #124

jimmydddd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."

That is in fact what the dictionary is supposed to do.

Yes, but also with a bit of lag.

A dictionary would be all but useless, if it included words used for 2 months, and essentially never used in that context, way, or spelling again. That sort of means teenage slang probably shouldn't appear, and amusingly if it did appear in the dictionary, it'd probably be less 'cool' to use that slang.

And alt-spellings for 'being kool' aren't what I'd call a dictionary thing.

Put another way, slang is in the dictionary, but only long-standing slang. Such as 'cool'. I'd see it more as temp slang->more used->enters dictionary-> eventually the 'slang' note is dropped, it's just language.

I'd want to see a word used for a few years, before it enters. And really, some slang morphs endlessly, like a fire flickering and then going out. How do you capture that? Even online, it'd be out of date once published.

And lots of slang is colloquial. Do you care to add slang language used across dozens of regions in the US?

I recall 20 years ago, Oxford Dictionary took a literal physical trip across Canada, and made the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, filled with 2200 'Canadianisms'. Akin to what you're saying here, if people are using it, it should be in there. But these were things Canadians had been saying for decades...

Anyhow.

I guess my point is, the kid was wrong because transitory has no value in the dictionary. His special words won't be used by even him, in a year.