Re: git: 71f0bf9790 - main - .vale/styles: Merge spelling-exceptions

> On Dec 23, 2023, at 8:55 PM, Pau Amma <pauamma@gundo.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2023-12-23 18:51, Ceri Davies wrote:
>>> On 23 Dec 2023, at 18:43, Moin Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>> On Dec 23, 2023, at 7:23 PM, Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net> wrote:
>>>>>> On 23 Dec 2023, at 11:33, Moin Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Dec 23, 2023, at 12:07 PM, Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 22 Dec 2023, at 14:59, Muhammad Moinur Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>>>> +descendents
>>>>>> Although I have not checked for the context in which it is used, this word is almost certainly misspelled as “descendent” is an adjective. The noun “descendants” is most likely the intended use.
>>>>> No it's not. The actual word is descendant which can be used as both Noun and Adjective and descendents is the plural of that.
>>>> That is not correct.  Pluralising a noun by adding an “s” does not frequently - or ever, as far as I can think - change the spelling of the rest of a word.
>>>> “Descendent”, as I said, is an adjective and the plural of “descendant” is “descendants”.
>>> At the moment I am not in the state to fight over a word. If you think the word is wrong please find the origin in the doc tree and submit a review or commit it.
>> It’s definitely wrong.  I will change it at some point, but we need to
>> be extra careful with words we are adding to the linter.
> 
> If I may:
> 
> MW online (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/descendant) has "descendant" both as an adjective and a noun, and says "or less commonly descendent" in both.
> 
> AHD online (https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=descendant) has it as a noun, and as an adjective says "Variant of descendent". Its "descendent" entry (https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?id=D5155900) has it only as an adjective, and says "de·scen·dent also de·scen·dant"; both AHD entries together imply but do not say outright "descendent" is more common.
> 
> I couldn't, unfortunately, check the ODAE as it seems to have no free online edition. Still, as the above shows, there's room for disagreement and which of you is right depends on which dictionary you prefer. So the question becomes: which dictionary does (or should) the FreeBSD Documentation Project prefer when they disagree?
> 
> --
> #BlackLivesMatter #TransWomenAreWomen #AccessibilityMatters #StandWithUkrainians
> English: he/him/his (singular they/them/their/theirs OK)
> French: il/le/lui (iel/iel and ielle/ielle OK)
> Tagalog: siya/niya/kaniya (please avoid sila/nila/kanila)


Hi Pau,

Thanks for finding the details. There is no certain dictionaries that
has been ever defined for the doc project. The basic rule is US English
preferred over British English.

The dictionary that comes with Vale is a concise version of dictionary
generated from the hunspell project. And may not contain all the
uncommon words or less frequently used words.

It's not that I haven't checked it in details before adding this word
but the problem is this word was used in a very old articles of ours
which we prefer not to touch due to it's value and spread over in many
mediums. So rather than fixing the word I added this word in the
accepted terms. Because it is not totally a wrong word despite it
might be a less frequent one. Normally an average english speaking
person speaks around 3000-5000 most frequent words, while a college
going person speaks or knows something in between 15000-20000 and on
different occasions who are going for a PhD or running for a US
Presidential Candidacy(With Political Science Background) knows or
uses around 40000 words out of the millions currently available in
the dictionaries. So if I consider myself at the worst I don't know
or never heard of 99.7% of the English words on the other hand if
someone is at the best level they do not know or never spoke of 96%
of the words. Now the very basic question is "Is it worth the time
of someone to be on those top percentiles?"

Thanks for your time.

Kind regards,
Moin