
English rules of thumb with grep - piedradura
As a native spanish I was wondering about the words ending in tial or cial, in Spanish they end in cial, for example 
English tangential =&gt; tangencial versus 
English spacial    =&gt; espacial<p>grep to the rescue:<p>grep -cE &quot;[^aeiou]tial$&quot; british-english =&gt; 40<p>grep -cE &quot;tial$&quot; british-english =&gt; 43,<p>conclusion: with 3 exceptions the rule is   (no vowel) + tial<p>grep -Ec &quot;[aeiou]cial$&quot; british-english =&gt; 21<p>grep -Ec &quot;cial$&quot; british-english =&gt; 26, 
so with 5 exceptions (vowel)+cial.<p>There must be many low hanging fruit to collect rules of thumb using grep to help you use words correctly.  Perhaps someone can give a hint about some of them.<p>Edit: It seems this rule is well known: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;howtospell.co.uk&#x2F;cial-and-tial-spelling-rules
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theophrastus
"help you use words correctly" how exactly? This is an interesting bit of
etymology, to be sure; but is just one example of a whole library of similar
relations. For example, there are entire books devoted to the historical
transitions between Germanic languages ('d', 'v') to English ('th', 'f'). That
is, you'll see even more impressive numbers with this approach: grep -c -i
"^th" british-english

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piedradura
I don't have a German dictionary, my point is that a german person can
discover interesting relations between English and German using grep, for
example the one you suggest about ('d','v') becoming ('th','f'). The use of
gerl is not essential but is a handy tool.

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geeio
You should listen to the
[http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/).

He goes into great detail about how the Proto-Germanic languages evolved via
sound changes (e.g. Grimm's law).

Also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law)

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dfsegoat
This is cool. We have particular problems with English vs. British spelling
for medical terminologies. We have a lookup table for these and other
synonyms:

e.g.: "Haemorrhage" vs. "Hemorrhage" etc

