1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
If a shortcut creates ambiguity, then the only way to avoid that ambiguity is to avoid the shortcut.
You can try to define it a certain way, but it won't work if it depends on people seeing your definition because most people won't see it. And even if they did see it, they'd need to agree with it.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of interpreting single letters as the name of the letter instead of the sound, unless it's an initial. I don't feel strongly enough to complain about it if I see someone use "u" instead of "you", but your post made me realize I don't even think of "why" when I see y, I just think "yes", though context probably affects that.
I guess the ambiguity comes from non native English speakers using it.
It was used for "why" in the 90s and early 2000s.