[texhax] "@" : vowel or glottal stop ? (was : Some puzzling TeX)

[Philipp Stephani]

Am 19.02.2011 um 13:48 schrieb Heiko Oberdiek:

> plain.tex:
> | \chardef\@ne=1
> | \chardef\tw@=2
> | \chardef\thr@@=3
> | \chardef\sixt@@n=16
> 
> * Why \thr@@ and \sixt@@n have *two* "@"?

Because the @'s replace only one spoken vowel (the long I).

> * \@ne has the "@" at the beginning, not at the end as the others.

Because the "e" is not pronounced as a vowel. The rule seems to be: take one of the syllables, and replace all vowels in it with @'s.

> 
>> \count@ : count zero
> 
> plain.tex:
> | \countdef\count@=255

Right, this should be
\counttwohundredfiftyf at ve

L3 makes this more consistent:
\c_twohundred_fifty_five
(but why not \c_two_hundred_fifty_five?)