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[Africa]

I don't think it makes sense to treat acronyms exactly the same as the abbreviated words - then it produces the unnatural-sounding "a RPG, a FPS, a ATM" etc. For all practical purposes, acronyms are distinct words which are formed from a series of letters, but their own words nevertheless.

On a sort of related note, I ran into a linguistically fascinating thing the other night. You know how Spanish speakers have problems with words beginning with St-, Sp- and so on. Well I heard this gem "maybe he's an espy." I'm not totally sure what this says about psycholinguistics, but I found it really interesting that rather than taking the existing two words "a spy", seeing that that is still pronounceable, and just saying it straight up, whatever brain center is responsible for these things instead converted "spy" to "espy" and THEN applied the rule that "if a word begins with a glottal stop, the indefinite article becomes 'an' and elides into the word."

[Leafsnail]

I do pronunciation wise.  A RPG just... doesn't work.

And an H, I guess.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A RPG just... doesn't work.

Sure it does. A RPG. A Role-Playing Game. A Rocket Propelled Grenade. It works no matter what.

[ein]

A RPG just... doesn't work.

Sure it does. A RPG. A Role-Playing Game. A Rocket Propelled Grenade. It works no matter what.

A arr-pee-gee.

[G-Flex]

I don't think it makes sense to treat acronyms exactly the same as the abbreviated words - then it produces the unnatural-sounding "a RPG, a FPS, a ATM" etc.

Right. You treat an acronym as you'd be pronouncing it. So it's "an RPG" and "a UI". Obviously, if you pronounce them as if they're words, things might change a bit.


So yeah, MetalSlimeHunt is just... wrong. You pronounce "RPG" as "RPG"; it isn't magically auto-expanded. If you want to say "role-playing game" then say "a role-playing game".

I usually write it as it's said, so I use 'an FPS' and 'a first person shooter'.

Yep. This is precisely how you're supposed to.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I know isn't auto-expanded. I just thought I'd include it, albeit without reason.

[Josephus]

You should really have a reason for the things you do.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You've never done somthing without reason and then questioned it later?

[Josephus]

I do it all the time. But don't let my blatant hypocrisy stop you from being all you can be and PIERCING THROUGH TO TOMORROW!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't get it, but I'm guessing that has somthing to do with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann?

[Josephus]

Yeah, but every time I do a quoted "Pierce through to tomorrow" search on google, all I get are some site called Otakuism and every thread I've ever used that phrase in here.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, but every time I do a quoted "Pierce through to tomorrow" search on google, all I get are some site called Otakuism and every thread I've ever used that phrase in here.

I think the original quote is something about someone's drilling "Pierc[ing] the heavens" or something like that.

[Josephus]

"Yours/this is the drill that will pierce the heavens", I believe.

I think I may be quoting the Japanese transliteration. One of my friends who is a fan of the anime kept on shouting it at me over lunch. I suspect that she'd been watching a subbed version?

[Leafsnail]

Speaking of which, it's an H game.

Checkmate.

(not sure what the above post looks like out of context)

[Muz]

A RPG just... doesn't work.

Sure it does. A RPG. A Role-Playing Game. A Rocket Propelled Grenade. It works no matter what.

If you actually use the full word "role-playing game", then 'a' would be correct.