@kibi Mine is that the a/an distinction will disappear, most likely in favour of using an all the time, but that will take a long time to happen.

@witchfynder_finder @kibi *an long time

@lizardsquid @kibi FUckin hoisted

@witchfynder_finder @lizardsquid I think "a whole nother" provides evidence that the a/an distinction will shift towards a, actually, and maybe we'll just see n's popping up at the beginning of other random words 🤷🏻‍♀️

@kibi @lizardsquid That could be it, too! My personal rationale is that it's easier to say, for example, "an night" than it is to say "a apple."

@witchfynder_finder @kibi you could also argue that the /n/ in "an" would assimilate in the phrase "an night", producing /æn'ɒɪ̞t/

@lizardsquid @kibi Yeah, that's part of what makes it easier to say than the other. Like, personally I'd rather kinda slur two words together and keep the current paradigm for vowel-initial words than have to inject a glottal stop every time for vowel-initial words and keep the current system for consonant-initial ones.

But I'm just one speaker.

@witchfynder_finder @lizardsquid @kibi yeeeeees, use "an" for everything, and then realise that you neeeeed to distinguish between arbitrary words being gendered or not-gendered (neutrum) and start using "at" for neutrum words!

E.g. an horse, at house,

And then you're finally approaching Danish ("en" / "et")!

@zatnosk @lizardsquid @kibi English already got rid of grammatical gender, I don't think we're gonna bring it back. =P

@witchfynder_finder @lizardsquid @kibi but.. we could have articles discerning between "common-gender" (an) "not-gendered" (neutrum; at) and "neutral-gendered" (like xe/xir; ax)

An horse, at house, ax orc!
Embrace the madness!

@zatnosk @lizardsquid @kibi Not-gendered and neutral-gendered is a really interesting distinction to me as an anglophone who can technically also speak German. Like. Those feel like the same thing to me. =P