Hi Barbara,

I'm sorry to hear that you've had such a bad week. I hope whatever gave you grief is quickly and favorably resolved. (And if the cause of the bad week was the Ukraine situation, I wish the same for everyone.)

As I am sure you already know (probably much better than I do), the answer to how something is done in English is often, "It's complicated."

When one is referring to the animal, the "g" in "gnu" is silent, but when one is discussing GNU in reference to Linux, the acronym is pronounced as two syllables - like "guh new," with a hard "g."

The indefinite article is sometimes pronounced "uh," and sometimes pronounced like the name of the letter "a." What I am about to write is with my native-English-speaker hat firmly on and my trained-linguist hat completely off, since I have not gathered and studied (or even read scholarly articles about) this subject. Having said that, I will say that it seems to me the choice of pronunciation will vary by dialect, by the word following the article, by the amount of emphasis one wishes to place on the article, and by whether one is saying it normally or is citing it.

For example, in my dialect, if a mother wished to give permission to a child to have a cookie, she might say, "You may have a cookie," with the indefinite article pronounced "uh," but if she wished to emphasize to the child that permission were granted only for one single cookie, she would stress the syllable by saying it a little louder and longer, and pronounce it like the name of the letter.

I was actually wondering when I wrote the "Noah" bit just how well it would go over for speakers of other dialects. I decided to keep it in, though, since I think it would have worked for a real Burns and Allen routine. I also figured that anyone who is a fan of Lois & Clark would likely be familiar enough with American dialects that the joke would eventually make sense to them, even if they didn't think it funny initially.

I must admit that I am glad I am a native speaker of English -- if only because I imagine it would be a bear to learn as a second or foreign language. I give huge amounts of kudos to you and to anyone else who is able to become fluent in it as an ESL/EFL student. I'm not sure I would succeed in it.

Joy,
Lynn