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zarzavattoday at 1:41 AM2 repliesview on HN

Ooh and aah aren't words, they're sounds (onomatopoeia). A sound is just a sequence of letters used for their phonological values.

You can spell the sound "ah" however you like: ah, ahh, aah, aahh, there's no wrong way to spell it.

If you write "the washing machine tringged when it finished", 'tring' is not a word, even though it's following the rules of English morphology, you could have written any sequence of letters that most faithfully reproduces the sound of the washing machine. You could have written katrigged or puh-tringged.


Replies

paulcoletoday at 4:20 AM

Ooh and aah most certainly are words. Is meow not a word? Can I spell it miough and sit smugly correct?

thaumasiotestoday at 1:43 AM

That is false; the fact that you can conjugate aah (or tring) into the past tense is sufficient to prove it's a word.