Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

I think the “What it won’t touch” section shows why the entire concept is unsound. Here it is with a different first sentence, and (other than the third sentence no longer matching erm’s reality) it’s perfectly coherent:

> It leaves um, uh, er and elongated versions (ummmm, uhhhhh) alone. Those sound like fillers but they’re doing real work in the sentence, and cutting them automatically would change what someone said. The rule erm follows: only remove things that are sound, not language.

> It also doesn’t touch repeated words, false starts, or long thinking pauses. Those aren’t noise on top of the speech; they are the speech, just messier than the speaker would like. Cleaning them up is an editorial decision about which take to keep, and erm doesn’t have an opinion about that.

Think about it. Cleaning these things-that-can-be-just-sounds-but-can-also-very-much-be-load-bearing up is an editorial decision. At the very least, you need to judge based on the surrounding content whether the removal of an um would change the meaning at all; and I don’t think text alone is adequate for that.

>> It leaves um, uh, er and elongated versions (ummmm, uhhhhh) alone.

Something's already gone wrong here. Uh and er refer to the same sound. Uh is the American spelling. Er is British; to them a following "r" like that is just a kind of vowel.

Um… no. Quite different vowel sounds.

(Also, in case it wasn’t clear: I was quoting from the start of the article in that sentence.)

They're quite different vowel sounds in the same sense that "back" and "back" use "quite different vowel sounds" when pronounced by American vs British speakers.

But not in any other sense.

> in case it wasn’t clear: I was quoting from the start of the article in that sentence.

You don't seem to be quoting from the article at all, actually. You've combined two different sentences in a way that grossly misrepresents what the article says. But that's not really relevant to the point here.

Regardless of American vs. British spellings, those are not the same sound. Some British people may pronounce them the same. Americans definitely pronounce them differently, though. For instance, the word “water” has a hard “r” sound at the end; Americans don’t pronounce it “watuh” like some British people do.

They are two names for the same sound. There is no particle "er" in American English. There could be one, theoretically, but there isn't.

"Er" is definitely distinct as an interjection, it's usually used instead of "um" to indicate a correction and does sound different.

Are you claiming that a rhotic "er" exists in American English, or that the British particle "er" is distinct from the British particle "erm"?

> it's usually used instead of "um" to indicate a correction and does sound different

Obviously people can hear the difference between vocalizing with your mouth open and vocalizing with your mouth closed. But there is no systematic difference in use, similarly to how there is no systematic difference in use between "uh-huh" and "mhm".

> Are you claiming that a rhotic "er" exists in American English, or that the British particle "er" is distinct from the British particle "erm"?

Neither. In Amrican English we're fully pronouncing the "r" when we say "er" instead of "um".

> Obviously people can hear the difference between vocalizing with your mouth open and vocalizing with your mouth closed.

That would be "uh" vs "um", not "er".

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