Talk:aa

It seems to me that the abbreviations listed are written as AA rather than aa or Aa. Andres 19:52, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• fixed. - Centrx 21:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• Shouldnt these link to AA instead then? —Muke Tever 22:18, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

About the Estonian "word": How is this any different from "ah" or "aah" (so, why should it not be there instead) and why should this language have a unique entry for this interjection when it is common through so many languages and means the same thing in all of them? Should there be a different section in "aa" for all of dozens of languages when the word-formation means the same thing in all of them? - Centrx 21:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• It may not be substantially different in meaning from English "ah", but it's not an English word, and apparently it is not spelled like an English word either.
• The sound may be common (by its nature, this is almost inevitable), but it isn't true that it means the same thing in all the languages that have it — in Ancient Greek, for example, ἆ was an interjection that expressed pity, contempt, or warning.
• I'm sure a lot of languages have interjections like English ah, or oh, or ugh, but I doubt there are many that actually spell them that way. Likewise not all languages will spell them like Estonian, either — and even if they did, that's no reason not to catalog them; some words have the misfortune to have some international scope (modern words do this too, like modem, or auto), but that doesn't make them any less valid as words to be entered. —Muke Tever 22:18, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is the same word as in English, and the spelling is only a transcription of the sound. In other words, all of "ahh", "ah", "aah", and "aa" are the same word, with different spelling, and it wouldn't be strictly incorrect to use "aa" in English.

In English it means all of these things as well. It's a very multipurpose word that has probably been used for everything. The OED has "sorrow, lamentation, regret, etc.", "entreaty, appeal, remonstrance, etc.", and "dislike, aversion, etc.".

This brings up the question then, what to do about words with the exact same meaning in multiple languages and what to do about having extremely long pages for each word. Once these translations get going, it's simply not going to be feasible to have them on the same page. And if they don't get going, then what's the point? - Centrx 23:24, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is not the same word, any more than English dog and Mbabaram dog "dog" (regularly from a protoform *gudaga) are the same word, or all the "mama"-type Lallwörter (which are, themselves, open to variant meanings, like Georgian's მამა(mama) "father") are the same word. (BTW, take a look at ah and notice the different Estonian translations for each of the different senses, strongly implying that these words are not congruent.)

As for the spelling being a transcription of the sound, I can't agree. Spelling (especially in languages like English) is part of a standard, not an arbitrary representation of sounds, and "ah", not "aa" is how this word is standardly spelled in English — the only examples I can find of "aa" offhand are as a borrowing of Japanese ああ (aa) in zipangophile contexts where other Japanese loanwords are to be found, or dialect forms — Scots, apparently.

As for words that have the same meaning in multiple languages, that happens already, with words like animal (French, Spanish, English, Latin), or with "languages" like Bosnian and Croatian that differ less from each other than UK and US English, and it isn't for the most part a problem — non-English entries are, in the current template, substantially smaller than the English ones (mainly by virtue of not having a =Translations= heading) — and for this type of word, variant spelling rules alone dictate that not too many will build up on a page; entries for jp ああ, grc ἆ, en ah, et aa, ru а, what have you, all go on different pages, so I'm not sure exactly how dire this may be. —Muke Tever 03:38, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't that stuff at the top go to a regular See also heading at the bottom of the English article? Or do we need some other standard for such things? — Hippietrail 15:47, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Isn't this, according to the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, also an obsolete English term meaning "stream" or "watercourse" (the citation coming from a book dated 1430)? 173.88.246.138 22:01, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

1430 would be Middle English by Wiktionary standards- fortunately, because a single use wouldn't be enough to qualify a term for inclusion as modern English according to our Criteria for inclusion, but will suffice for Middle English. It's a bit complicated, though- see the discussion I just started at Wiktionary:Tea_room/2023/June#aa. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:15, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Can I find a list of words starting with aa on here in English? Fox's Account (talk) 00:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Probably the simplest way to do this is go to Category:English lemmas and use the links at the top to go to "a" and "A". There are other methods using Special:PrefixIndex or Special:Search which can also be used for something that doesn't involve the first letters of the alphabet in the first part of the word, like this does. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:03, 30 June 2023 (UTC)Reply