Gail Shaw wrote:
> The Sahara desert, SQL language

Well, there's that too. I live near "La Jolla Cove". Where "La Jolla" in 
Spanish is "cove". (Assuming you spell it right, which "La Jolla" isn't.)

Back on the east coast, there's a place called something like "Mount 
Campbell Hill", except it's about 5 words long, and each word is "Hill" 
in a different language. Apparently, every time someone new conquered 
the region, they called it "Yadda yadda hill" in the local language, and 
it just grew from there.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
news:4877bbcb$1@news.povray.org...

> I don't know that "Sahara Desert" is the same type of redundancy, though

Probably not.
It's kinda a case of is it a word in a foreign language, or is it a proper
noun. But then you could probably make the argument that some acronyms are
almost words and have lost their former meanings

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:07:29 +0200, Gail Shaw wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:4877bbcb$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> I don't know that "Sahara Desert" is the same type of redundancy,
>> though
> 
> Probably not.
> It's kinda a case of is it a word in a foreign language, or is it a
> proper noun. But then you could probably make the argument that some
> acronyms are almost words and have lost their former meanings

That's certainly true enough. :-)

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I'm 97% sure you'll be able to answer this...
> 
> You know when somebody says something like "the TCP protocol", but the P 
> already stands for "protocol", so they're really saying "the 
> transmission control protocol protocol"... annoying, isn't it?... is 
> there a name for that particular mistake?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Otherwise described as a rhetorical tautology or pleonasm.

Apparently.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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While we're on the subject of obscure grammatical edge-cases...

According to the rules, a word beginning with a vowel should be prefixed 
with "an", otherwise it's just "a":

   A cat.
   An elephant.

The idea - apparently - is that it's awkward to move from the sound of 
"a" to the sound of "e" without an intervining consonant.

Now consider:

   A Europian.

Technically, according to the rules, this should in fact be

   An Europian.

which just sounds silly...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 a écrit :
> While we're on the subject of obscure grammatical edge-cases...
> 
> According to the rules, a word beginning with a vowel should be prefixed 
> with "an", otherwise it's just "a":
> 
>   A cat.
>   An elephant.
> 
> The idea - apparently - is that it's awkward to move from the sound of 
> "a" to the sound of "e" without an intervining consonant.
> 
> Now consider:
> 
>   A Europian.
> 
> Technically, according to the rules, this should in fact be
> 
>   An Europian.
> 
> which just sounds silly...
> 

Well the sound at the beginning of "European" is arguably a consonant, 
so the rule still works...

/ˌjʊəɹəˈpiːən/

It even has a name :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_approximant

-- 
Vincent

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Vincent Le Chevalier wrote:

> Well the sound at the beginning of "European" is arguably a consonant, 
> so the rule still works...
> 
> /ˌjʊəɹəˈpiːən/
> 
> It even has a name :-)
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_approximant

Heh. ALL word sounds have names!

Also... You *know* you've been programming in Haskell too long when you 
see something like

   i_^

and it looks like some kind of ASCII art...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> According to the rules, a word beginning with a vowel should be prefixed 
> with "an", otherwise it's just "a":

  No. A word beginning with a vowel *sound* should be prefixed with "an".
Even if the word begins with a vowel letter, if the sound is that of a
consonant, it gets an "a".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> You know when somebody says something like "the TCP protocol", but the P 
> already stands for "protocol", so they're really saying "the 
> transmission control protocol protocol"... annoying, isn't it?

Not really.

It's when people refuse to recognize that they are using a certain 
phrase incorrectly.

Regards,
John

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> According to the rules, a word beginning with a vowel should be prefixed 
>> with "an", otherwise it's just "a":
> 
>   No. A word beginning with a vowel *sound* should be prefixed with "an".
> Even if the word begins with a vowel letter, if the sound is that of a
> consonant, it gets an "a".

Weeee... I'm learning things on teh interwebs...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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