I've simply created several profiles for each language I learn.

To be rather pedantic, the a/an rule rests on the following sound. If it is a vowel sound, one uses "an"; if it is a consonant sound one uses "a".

An exception to the rule: "an" may be used with certain words that begin with a sounded "h" e.g. "What an historic occasion!"; although this exception is becoming somewhat archaic.

So, unless you would actually say "This is just a For Your Information" (and to my mind, one would only say either "This is just for your information." or "This is just an FYI."), technically the only correct way of writing it would be "an FYI", though I'm personally not too bothered.

Back to native English speakers though, "literally" is a word I fear will have completely lost its meaning by the time I have kids (I'm 22). Its beauty should be solely reserved for situations such as:

A man giving a touching speech at a wedding takes a step backward near a table dressed in candles and his coattails, unbeknownst to him, catch alight. A well meaning friend shouts out:

"You're on fire!"

"Thank you!" he replies, none the wiser.

"No, you're literally on fire!"

Crisis avoided, the day hath been saved. Alas, thanks to the youth of today and their:

"OMG. I got up so late I had to, like, literally, like, fly to school!"

and

"OMG. I couldn't get a lift today, so I had to like, literally, like walk to school!"

its original purpose will soon be lost, forgotten like words such as "hath" and "alas".

Oh, and thank you for the lingot! It's not often I find someone who has such respect for the English language - and because I already have over 1500 lingots; here, have "an" L. ;-)

slam53

Bitte nenn mich einfach Adam :)

Ja, ich war nur ein bisschen pedantisch an deine Regel. Wir würden jedoch zustimmen, ob es "an" oder "a" FYI ist, wenn du meinem ersten Punkt richtig zustimmst.

Der Ton, der "a/an" folgt, ist der einzige Faktor, der sich entscheidet, ob es "a" oder "an" ist. Daher hängt es davon ab, ausschließlich ob man "Eff-Why-Eye" oder "For Your Information" sagt. Das war meine Änderung an deine Regel, und wenn du da zustimmst, kann man tatsächlich nur "an" FYI sagen (doch ist mir egal, ob man "a" FYI sagt).

Bitte schön und vielen Dank :) ich bin mir sicher, dass ich 22 bin :P, aber es freut mich, was du da gesagt hast.

InuzukaShino

Du kannst mich auch einfach Adam nennen ;-)

I totally see your point and where you're coming from, but unfortunately that is pretty common standard operating procedure (or SOP :P) in English. Acronyms and abbreviations typically start becoming independent from what they stand for and take a life of their own pretty quickly in English.

One recent example is "You Only Live Once" captured with the latin "carpe diem" that got hijacked by a segment of today's youth who turned it into YOLO and it went from meaning "Don't be afraid to chase your dreams" to "Let's do something stupid". This has happened to such an extent that now, I would listen closely to anyone giving advice with the reminder "You only live once" and pretty much ignore everything else someone had to say who said "YOLO!".

Another example is taking the last word of an acronym or abbreviation and repeating it in full, thus making it redundant. Say, for example, a company has private healthcare that they call their "Get Well Programme" or GWP. Something that many native speakers would say is "Ooh, I'm not feeling too well; I think I need to get on the GWP programme." EVEN THOUGH THE P ALREADY STANDS FOR PROGRAMME!

So us (or "we" as I've learnt with German :P) native English speakers have a lot of issues with our acronyms and abbreviations. Regarding FYI, what's happened is that it started out as a quicker way of saying "for your information" and has become "something that is for your information"

• "Hey, just for your information, Steve's getting a new car."

• "Hey, just FYI, Steve's getting a new car."

• "Hey, just an FYI, Steve's getting a new car."

I guess it's just one of those things that happen to a language, regardless of whether or not es macht Sinn. ;-)

Hi Susan, I think the source of confusion was the reason for my pedanticism.

I believe that if we focus on the sound rather than the first letter we won't have to add any exceptions (except "historic" for the purists).

• The silent "h" sounds like a vowel;

• The strong "u" sounds like a consonant ("y");

• Reading the letters in "FYI" begins with a vowel sound ("e")

So, instead of comparing "FYI" to other words such as "French" or "fast" just because they start with the same letter; we should be comparing "FYI" to words such as "effervescent" and "effigy" because they start with the same sound. I hope that makes sense.

Also, in your last post to InuzukaShino you mentioned:

„Das ist nur ein FYI“

The reason why a German kid would say this is due to the recent (this has been happening for around the last 30 years I believe) influx of anglicisms, leading to what many people refer to as "Denglisch".

It is the reason why German speakers refer to mobile phones as „Handys“ (as InuzukaShino refered to in one of her earlier posts). Watching "Berlin - Tag und Nacht" showed me how extensive at times Denglisch can be!

You are correct. I am being pedantic. That is, however, for the purpose of keeping the "a/an" rule down to just:

• "a" when it precedes a consonant sound; &

• "an" when it precedes a vowel sound.

Job done. Case closed. The only possible archaic exception being "historic".

Re:Denglisch

Sorry, I wasn't entirely clear and I can see how what I said could be misinterpreted.

The anglicisms that I am referring to that become Denglisch are generally (or historically) misconstrued in some way (though in recent times, I do believe the word generally just gets taken across from English to German and keeps its meaning).

Take „Handy“ for an example. Mobile phones are (these days) almost always in one's hand and they are extremely handy (convenient/helpful) so a German could hear an English speaker say "This is really handy." and turn that into „Was für ein Handy!“ or something to that effect. Obviously I don't know the exact story of how „Handy“ came to become the German for mobile phone.

A couple of other interesting examples:

• Der Smoking. Can you guess? Yep, the blazer. Or, the smoking jacket.

• Der Oldtimer. This one's easy. The vintage car.

These ones are clearly a bit different from „das Handy“, as their meaning is closer to their English origin, but I hope you'll agree there's something funny about all of them.

Like I said, more recently the English words are taken and keep their original meaning, though I see those less as Denglisch and more as just using English in your German. In my mind a hallmark of Denglisch is that it isn't quite right in either English or German, but that might just be me.

A final point, I don't think InuzukaShino was saying that Germans are using the term "FYI"; I think she was just giving an example.

Hey Susan. I'll start with the bad news first. I get „ and “ by typing "Alt" + "0132" and "Alt" + "0147" respectively on my laptop's number pad. The bad news is I believe you can't do that on a Mac. Sorry about that. With my limited (and by limited I mean limited to nothing) knowledge of Macs, I can only recommend copy and paste as you have already been told.

The good news, all the formatting you have seen from my posts is available and nicely summed up here.

N.B. The "greyed-out" letters are hyperlinks to separate webpages.

EDIT P.S. (Britisches) Englisch. Was hast du gedacht?

Ich glaub, der erste Satz war richtig, ich meine doch, dass wir uns miteinander duzen sollen (wie du mich in deinem zweiten Satz gemacht hast), da wir uns bei Vornamen nennen.

Ich antworte auf eine deiner ersten Kommentare, dadurch kann ich dir quasi-direkt antworten.

Und das Lied heißt MfG von den Fantastischen Vier. Das habe ich von ihrem Vevo-Kanal genommen. Es sollte hoffentlich wirken.

Bitte.

I would have learnt the German alphabet when I studied German for my GCSEs, which would be over 7 years ago now, and thankfully they seemed to have stuck pretty well.

Here's a phonetic guide to the alphabet (or my best attempt at least :P):

• A - ah

• B - bay

• C - tsay

• D - day

• E - ay

• F - eff

• G - gay

• H - ha

• I - ee

• J - yott

• K - kah

• L - el

• M - em

• N - en

• O - oh

• P - pay

• Q - coo

• R - airr (deliberately two rs)

• S - es

• T - teh/tay (might be best shown as täh)

• U - oo

• V - fow

• W - veh/vay (again, may be best as väh)

• X - iks

• Y - ipsilon

• Z - tsett

I don't know if the letters of the alphabet are on there, but try forvo or youtube for an audible guide, that will be light years ahead of my rough guide.

I'm generally good with recalling the entire alphabet in one go, but recalling individual letters can be an issue. Take "I" for example, which is pronounced identically to our "E", and "E" which is pronounced identically to our "A". For whatever reason I tend to struggle with remembering "fow" for "V", and typically go for "veh" which is actually "W". A good exercise for remembering those two is the car company Volkswagen, or VW (fow-veh). Generally, however, the German alphabet isn't too bad.

I guess it's also worth adding on the extra letters:

• Ä - ehh/erh

• Ö - uurh (I find "Ö" just about impossible with English phonetics)

• Ü - oo (with an even tighter mouth than for "U")

• ß - es - tsett (two-syllables)

All of these (understandably) are pretty tough to do with English phonetics (as they don't exist in English phonetics!).