> "e'er" would sound slightly different as it's spoken almost like two syllables, though not quite.
I'm a native English speaker (US). Sometimes when I say "ever"/"never", the 'v' sound drops out. So I end up saying "e'er"/"ne'er" but it sounds like "air"/"nair".
> Further down the list, I've just spotted "taught, taut, tot" and "tot" doesn't belong there.
Right, you said you're from the UK so that's in line with what I would have expected. My unstated point was that multinyms are intrinsically tied to dialects so there is no absolute list of multinyms
> multinyms are intrinsically tied to dialects so there is no absolute list of multinyms
Definitely. I find it fascinating how pronunciations can change so much geographically and the UK certainly has some variety in that regard.
I remember being a kid on a German school exchange and being surprised that they couldn't distinguish between "salary" and "celery". I've also heard that Germans find it almost impossible to pronounce "squirrel".
I also had difficulty on a holiday to the U.S. and trying to ask someone in a shop where the "batteries" were. He just couldn't understand me until I described them and he said "Oh! Badderies". My wife also had a problem asking for "Winston's" cigarettes until the lady at the counter exclaimed "Wenston's"
I'm from South Carolina, USA and I pronounce 'greater' and 'grader' the same. There is a subtle difference and that difference can be more noticeable sometimes, but most of the time I'm saying them the same.
For everything in this list, its incredibly common for these groupings to have the same pronunciation where I live.
When a common word from another language is borrowed into English, it tends to take on a more specific meaning. Most native English speakers wouldn't use "salsa" to describe any other sauce. Horno oven sounds perfectly reasonable in English to specifically describe an earth oven in that style, not the common household appliance.
EDIT: Probably the reason this happens is that most English speakers wouldn't be familiar with the foreign word, so the speaker uses it as a modifier to the standard English word. The listener doesn't need to know anything specific about the foreign word in that case and can just assume it's a type of the common item.
I think the acronym thing is related but a separate phenomenon. My guess would be that speakers intuitively think the acronym isn't easily understandable so they add an extra word to clarify it, intentionally or unintentionally duplicating one of the actual words in the acronym.
"pont bridge" sounds like the exact phenomenon though. Does it have a more specific meaning that "bridge"?
My argument is that it's not a mistranslation. In Spanish, "horno" means any kind of oven. In English, it means specifically an earth oven because when English speakers started using the word, they always used it to mean that kind of oven.
A sibling comment mentioned chai tea. It's the same phenomenon. Chai means any tea in its original language, but in English it means a specific variety and preparation of tea.
English is a bastardized language and has a lot of words borrowed from other languages. But once they're borrowed, they're English words and have their own meaning separate from their original loanword.
> just make transit more attractive, not make driving less attractive
If ppl drive more than use transit, they won't support improvements to transit. This is the first step to improving transit. Make driving less attractive, more ppl use transit, complain about its shortcomings, and then fixes get implemented.
I also don't see why we shouldn't make driving less attractive. As the grandparent comment said, drivers should be the ones paying for the problems caused by drivers, not residents.
> The basic thing I am saying is that if you call it a web browser and use the same core protocols etc., you have a practically infinite (for an individual) set of requirements to implement and will never be truly compatible
But what the parent is saying is you don't have to be compatible with 100% of websites. If you build a browser with good HTML/CSS/Javascript handling, you'll be compatible with the large majority of the web. Yes, there are other specs that are in use by a tiny portion of the web. But your browser can still exist if it doesn't support them. Users of that website will know or find out that they can't use your browser for that, but for every other user that browser could be exactly what they need.
> without having to worry about a fuzzy and ever-expanding definition of what you have to support.
It's only ever-expanding if you're trying to keep up with the Jones's. You can define a subset of the web you want to support and build a clean, small browser that supports that.
Aren't you the developer of Smithereen (a fediverse server)? Nearly every other fediverse software has a web interface that can act as a PWA. I launch lemmy.ml and kbin.social as standalone PWAs from my homescreen. My pleroma instance also has some PWA features (though not standalone display mode). I don't use Mastodon, but @nolan@toot.cafe did some amazing work years ago to make it a really fast and responsive PWA (which has since been undone ).
It's ok if you don't like to use PWAs but that doesn't mean nobody does or that they're worthless.
> Aren't you the developer of Smithereen (a fediverse server)?
I am. But I'm biased because I'm primarily an Android developer who turned into a web and backend developer for some projects (I still do Android as well). So naturally, web app (not web site) development feels cumbersome to me. It's like trying to build a proper app UI with a souped up version of Word macros and layout engine. I much prefer native apps. Smithereen will have a client API eventually, when all features I deem necessary for version 1.0 will have been implemented. The large remaining ones are photo albums and discussion boards in groups. The yet-unreleased direct messages need some finishing touches as well.
> It's ok if you don't like to use PWAs but that doesn't mean nobody does or that they're worthless.
Well, that's my point — Chrome and Firefox and Safari, being "mainstream" browsers, try their best to satisfy everyone. They support PWAs, they have extensive accessibility support (that's scarily complex as well!), they implement all those APIs and standards that are complex but mostly unused, etc.
If I were to build my own web browser from scratch, it'd have a warning in the readme along the lines of "if you require accessibility and/or PWA functionality, this is not for you, use one of the more advanced browsers".
I asked for it, and a lot of other ppl did too. These are great features and removing them would cause more than 1% of websites to lose some functionality.
But, importantly, they shouldn't lose their core functionality (if they're written well) because that's the "Progressive" part of PWA. If you don't use the feature or your browser doesn't support it, the website should still have basic functionality. One of the big ideas behind PWAs is "progressive enhancement", where you layer on features that may not be supported everywhere but add value when they are supported.
And a progressively built browser that doesn't implement every spec goes hand-in-hand with that. I think having more under-featured browsers like that would push webdevs into caring more about progressive enhancement.
I'm a native English speaker (US). Sometimes when I say "ever"/"never", the 'v' sound drops out. So I end up saying "e'er"/"ne'er" but it sounds like "air"/"nair".
> Further down the list, I've just spotted "taught, taut, tot" and "tot" doesn't belong there.
I pronounce all of these the same