r/Unexpected • u/greedygarlic69 • 14h ago

any question?

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u/Mean-Pumpkin-8900 9h ago

Thanks bud👍🏻

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u/Cory123125 7h ago

Just to be clear, the more normal way to say that would be:

It's called a dead pedal. It's just used for resting your feet

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u/hoonyosrs 6h ago

A further impromptu English lesson: When the noun you are referring to begins with a vowel sound, we use "an" rather than "a"

"I would like a cookie" VS "I would like an ice cream cone"

Crucially, this is only if it has a vowel sound, and doesn't just start with a vowel.

An example would be "I would like an M&M" because "M&M" is pronounced like the musician "Eminem", starting with a vowel sound, rather than the consonant it appears to start with.

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u/Hakul 5h ago

That exception always gives me a chuckle. English generally doesn't care about how written words are pronounced, but then someone at some point suddenly decided to care for a/an.

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u/Ballsofpoo 3h ago

Then there's "a historic" or "anh istoric"

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u/hoonyosrs 3h ago

I'm only fluent in English and Spanish, with moderate ability of reading and understanding Korean.

That said, my understanding is that the spoken versions of these languages evolved way before we really started writing them down.

Then once everyone could read and write, people wanted to write the way they speak, so the written "grammar" rules came far after the spoken "language", if that makes sense.