• @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      From the UK. I’ve never seen matte spelled as matt. CA, UK and AU are generally pretty close with spelling, whereas the US is usually off doing its own thing. It’s a similar thing to blonde and blond.

          • rand_alpha19
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            11 months ago

            Blond because French defaults to the masculine form if the gender of the noun is indeterminate.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 months ago

            If they’re non-binary, you’re going to be so anxious about using the right pronouns that you won’t even notice their hair color.

            Edit: it’s a joke answer, people, in response to a joke question. It’s not made at the expense of any marginalized individual or group. The only people who would be anxious about the situation are allies; the 'phobes don’t give a shit. Untwist yer knickers.

            • Match!!
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              311 months ago

              Have you talked to your therapist about that?

            • Mossy Feathers (She/They)
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              1211 months ago

              Nah, most enbys are chill and recognize that pronouns can be easy to forget. You’re just upset that people get annoyed when you repeatedly misgender them.

              • @[email protected]
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                411 months ago

                I had firsthand experience when an enby stayed at our place for a while. My old Gen X self had trouble remembering to use the correct pronouns sometimes, but it got easier with practice. Decades of using only binary pronouns for individuals takes time to unlearn.

                • Mossy Feathers (She/They)
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                  411 months ago

                  I’ll be honest, it took me a while to start remembering “they/them”, even for myself. However, now I have the opposite problem, which is that I tend to substitute “they/them” for gendered pronouns. Normally that’s not a problem because most people accept neutral pronouns, but some people can be very picky about their pronouns and then I have to remember that “they/them” can’t be universally applied to everyone.

          • @[email protected]
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            711 months ago

            I shit you not, that is the etymological distinction between the two.

            How strictly that distinction is observed is an open question.

    • Midnight Wolf
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      811 months ago

      Now I’m not saying anything, but I dated a Matt, and he did produce a lot of paste… I’d have to run the numbers to see if it’s viable for mass-production though.

    • @[email protected]
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      4511 months ago

      Thirding the notion that it’s definitely not “mat” in the US. A mat is something you put on the ground, Matt is my cousin’s ex-fiance, and matte is a surface finish with little to no shine.

      Really don’t know what people say English is hard to learn, we use the same word for so many things that there’s fewer words to learn /s

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Chamber’s dictionary has it as “Mat, or Matt, or matte” stating that it comes from the French “mat” or the German “matt”, so fuck knows where matte comes from!

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago

          The American spelling “matte” probably comes from the spelling “mate” derived from French “mate”, and doubling the “t” to differentiate it from “mate”. The British spelling “matt” was probably primarily influenced by the German word “Matt” considering the UK tended to have more German influence.

          Alternatively, either (or both) may be an etymological spelling from Latin “mattus” (which means “drunk” but likely became a word for “pale” in French).

          While I am a linguist, I only deduced this from a bit of Googling and a lot of speculating, so don’t take my word for it…