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A comment on A tale from the trenches fixing an NES.

Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by ar_lan on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:10PM (#24902104)
Serious grammar question...

Is the "an" in the title proper because NES, pronounced, sounds like /ɛn/, even though it's actually a consonant?

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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by beervirus on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:12PM (#24902122)
It just depends on how you say the initialism. If you say "ness" then you'd use "a". If you say "en ee ess" then you'd use "an".
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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by bitwize on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:20PM (#24902195)
The "ness" pronunciation is chiefly used by Brits (who also tend to pronounce SNES as "snezz").
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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by werdnapk on Monday October 26, 2020 @08:09PM (#24903120)
Canadian here... ness all the way.
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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by hobby-coder-guy on Monday October 26, 2020 @09:05PM (#24903488)
Canadian here. N E S all the way. You must be french.
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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by intpx on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @08:35AM (#24906779)
This is absolutely horrifying
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Re:A tale from the trenches fixing an NES by the137 on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @12:48AM (#24904551)
'an' is used when the sound of the next letter is the sound of a vowel, so in the case of eN-E-S, 'an' is correct.

In english multiple vowels in a row cause you to take a pause, which is why the -n is added

Worth noting, the other posters are correct in saying that 'a snezz' or 'a ness' is also correct.

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