We expect our management to know when to use ‘an’ instead of ‘a’.
Reality vs Fantasy
Submitted 12 hours ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5adcf31d-ba09-4e77-a6ed-a12f0aa388d6.png
Comments
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 11 hours ago
Bubs@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Would it be “an”? Does the a/an rule apply to whatever the next word is or does it apply to the word it is targeting? “An mindset” would be incorrect.
CatZoomies@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
In American English, the article “an” is used for a vowel sound to separate the words so they don’t blend together when speaking.
Normally, “a” always precedents a consonant, while “an” precedes a vowel. But “an” also precedes vowel sounds - I.e., the sound of the letter of the beginning of a word.
An apple A banana An hour
Hour starts with a consonant, but is pronounced with a vowel sound at the beginning. Thus, it is not “a hour” and rather “an hour”.
In the case of the example from the meme, id argue that either article works:
- A “I’m…” - Typically when speaking, a person has a brief pause before they begin the quote. Since that pause would be enough to distinctly indicate two separate words, this sounds fine when being verbally spoken.
- An “I’m…” - Looks great in text and would be the correct way to list it grammatically. However when speaking this aloud, since the person would have a brief pause when saying “an” and then the quote, it probably wouldn’t sound as great to some others.
My take - I like “an ‘I’m…’” best. Both in text and verbal form. Others may disagree as far as verbally said; however, grammatically in written form this is how it should be.
evening_push579@feddit.nu 11 hours ago
English being my second language, from why I’ve learnt, “a […] mindset” is correct.
hakase@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
So much badlinguistics in this subthread.
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
First, I agree with most of what your saying, but:
This means that the “a”/“an” alternation in Modern English is not to “ease pronunciation” in any way - like with many phenomena in English (and all languages for that matter), it’s just a vestigial remnant of an accidental historical process.
Why do you frame that as a dichotomy? To ease pronunciation, we take the older form (containing the consonant at the end) when a vowel follows and the reduced form (without the consonant) when a consonant follows. We alternate between these forms to ease pronunciation. Same for “the”: Arguably, the “strong the” is not /þi:/ but /þıj/ ending in a constant (/j/) and is therefore favored when a consonant follows to ease pronunciation. Sometimes it’s used for emphasis which also happens with “an” so it’s basically the same phenomenon.
There are other factors at play, as you pointed out the break to indicate quotation and regional differences. Also the glotal stop might not be consciously perceived but still trigger the same result as any consonant.
I for one use the a/an distinction as I learned it at school while having a glottal stop heavy accent due to my native language so I will say stuff like /ʔən ʔɛpl/ and act surprised when people know where I’m from.
RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
And all the prescriptivists just collapsed onto their fainting couches.
(I kid, nicely done. Also fuck prescriptivists.)
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
I’m not disagreeing with your larger point but I don’t necessarily buy the part of your explanation saying
This is easily demonstrable since “a” and “the” have the same vowel sound in fluent speech (for most dialects of English), but while we get “a cat” but “an apple”, we don’t get “the cat”, but “then apple”
because in most dialects (at least of American English) “the” before a consonant uses ə while before a vowel sound it’s ē.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 8 hours ago
What could the motivations of the owner be, if not to make money?
Please add to my list:- prestige
- tax avoidance
- boost retirement savings (in the USA, business owners can stuff their retirement accounts with LOTS of cash.)
- Create and disguise a "sex pad"
- improve the community by providing jobs and/or needed services (start a coffee shop so that there is a coffee shop.)
- time filler
Of those, I think a very healthy 401K contribution from the employer to the employee would be motivating to those already paid well.
Many employees already use the business as a sex pad. (Conference rooms can be gross.)
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
tax avoidance
that’s money bro
lolrightythen@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I would substitute “shock and awe” in place of prestige - but that is just personal flair.
Civic duty with a taste of all the above is my addition. I’ve worked in natural resource conservation of public land and municipal utility. It can be controversial, but its a net positive to me.
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Then treat your employees like humans, not human resources. That means sick days at the very least. If you want to be respected more, then start respecting your employees more.
cRazi_man@europe.pub 11 hours ago
No one calms down by being told to calm down.
No one gets a better attitude by being told to have a better attitude.
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
And please show me where I didn’t say that.
CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Yeah and i didn’t expect to work this hard for an ever decreasing buying power.
But here we are so fuck off.
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
This gives me AI vibes.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
Yeah I thought the same, can’t pinpoint it exactly, but even if it’s not AI it’s definitely fake as fuck regardless.
5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.org 11 hours ago
The letters on the pink paper don’t look printed, because the don’t reflect any light at all. The geometry of the second piece of paper also looks off too.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
The dimensions of the pink paper look just very slightly shorter than either A4 or US Letter. Sure, it could have been trimmed, but why would you go to the effort of trimming such a tiny amount on an otherwise low effort poster?
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
To a certain extent, this is why I am trying to stick with a mission driven career, choosing opportunities that I feel actually make some small part of the world a better place. Granted, yes, I’m ultimately doing the job because I need the paycheck since I prefer to have food, shelter, and some degree of freedom/control over my life.
Not everybody has that luxury, though.
And expecting people to play pretend all day as though it’s anybody’s life dream to be typing up OBMC reports because that’s their passion in life and that the people they work with are family and that the ultimate goal of being the dominant player in the disposable widgets industry is for the greater good of humanity – yeah, whatever that’s just subversive mind control games. Glad some people can live in that and deny reality, but for the rest of us, you want me to work, then pay me.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
The goal of the sign is to normalise the fantasy and through that “change reality” for the folk.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
I used to work in management for a Fortune 100 company, and they’d send people around for little afternoon management seminars on one thing or another (usually sexual harassment stuff).
One day, one of the visitors mentioned that money wasn’t even in the top 5 reasons that people work, and tried to move on from that, but I stopped them, and made them repeat it, and then said “Well that’s not true at all. It’s literally the ONLY reason ANYONE goes to work.”
They tried to argue it, but I just said "If it’s a Payday Friday, and the boss doesn’t hand out the paychecks, and tells everyone that there won’t be any future paychecks, but they’ll see everyone on Monday, the boss will walk into an empty office on Monday. Nobody works for any reason other than a paycheck "
And that was a great job, that almost everybody reading this would enthusiastically grab without thinking twice, but nobody is going to do it for free.