Why you should know: The ‘a’ vs ‘an’ conundrum is not about what letter actually begins the word, but instead about how the sound of the word starts.
For example, the ‘h’ in ‘hour’ is silent, so you would say ‘an hour’ and not ‘a hour’. A trickier example is Ukraine: because the ‘U’ is pronounced as ‘You’, and in this case the ‘y’ is a consonant, you would say “a Ukraine” and not “an Ukraine”.
Tip: when in doubt, sound it out(loud).
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Don’t forget that ‘h’ is an exception and counts as a vowel: “a hat”edit literally i am wrong about this why did i write that
This edit made me laugh
Don’t worry we’ve all been there
i think my blood sugar was low or sumthin lmao
Give me an hour and I’m sure I could find a counter-example
don’t even need an hour. “herb” has multiple regional pronunciations and so can receive both treatments depending on the context.
also my original comment was just wrong i don’t even know how i got to the point of writing that. “an hour” is the standard treatment of words starting with vowel sounds—the letters themselves don’t matter.
but “h” is treated as a consonant. which it is. duh. i feel so dumb lol.
A Ukraine? Really? Why couldn’t you use something practical like a university.
perhaps because russia initiated a ukranian invasion on february 24 2022.
Really, we’re covering basic grammar now?
You know there are english speaking folks outside of the US/UK.
Mindblowing, I know.Only when it’s needed.
With literacy rates in America “hold my beer” low and getting lower, maybe there’s a need.
Example: if people pluralize “email” different from “mail”, they may need to review.
I like how you tried to be a grammar snob and couldn’t even get your example right.
What’s wrong in the example?
Edit: oh
not everyone (thankfully) are american or british.
True, but this is really basic stuff. I think I learned this for English as 2nd language in primary school. We trust that people here know English well enough to understand the server rules, why then assume they don’t know basic grammar?
What makes this different from SVO word order? YSK how to use participles? Did you know about the order of adjective (That one is actually pretty interesting, but i’s not basic grammar so it gets to pass). At some point it is ridiculous to try to teach some grammar rules of English in English, and I believe this is well past that point. Even if one doesn’t speak the language naturally or have a formal education in it.
Our mouths really want to flow vowel->>consonant->> vowel->>consonant->> and various languages all have their ways of helping that happen.
An historic post.
Why would you use Ukraine as the example word instead of uniform?
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “the Ukraine” been pronounced both ways often enough.
US ambassador William Taylor said that using “the Ukraine” implies disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty.[25] The official Ukrainian position is that “the Ukraine” is both grammatically and politically incorrect.
I’ve seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:
TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of “a(n)”, “the” and “to” for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.
just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds.
You may say ‘dialect’, I’ll say ‘failed student’, potato, potato.
Y is a consonant ? what ?
Some modern English words have changed because the leading “n” from the noun migrated over to the article which precedes it, or from the article to the noun.
“Apron” was originally napron, “a napron”. “Nickname” was originally ekename (with the first part coming from the same root as “eke”, as in “eke out a living”). “An ekename” became “a nekename” and then “a nickname”.
I’ll chain on: This is why the english language calls the citrus fruit “Orange,” in a round-about way.
The Persians named them Narangs when they acquired them from Asia, which the Spanish turned into “naranja.” But when they crossed the channel “a naranja” became “an aranja” which eventually became “an orange.”
That’s happened in french and Italian too then, “une orange” and “un’arancia”. Wild.
Some examples of this phenomenon in French are “un ombril” -> “un nombril” (a navel, from the latin umbilicus) and “l’ierre” -> “le lierre” (the ivy, from the latin hedera).
This is an great post
Truly an historic effort by OP
With certain accents that’s actually correct
I don’t disagree at all but I know it bugs some people, so here we are.
It is very basic stuff tho, anyone who learned enough english to read this post would’ve already been taught this. Except for native speakers maybe?
Ubisoft needs to hear this.
It hurts my soul everytime I start up Farcry 5 and see “A Ubisoft Game” and not “An Ubisoft Game” on the intro splash screens.
Unless they pronounce it something other than You-Bee-Soft or Ooo-bee-soft. In which case, that would hurt my soul even more.
I’ve only ever heard it pronounced “You-Bee-Soft” and the “yuh” sound that starts with functions as a consonant. You wouldn’t say “An youtube video.”
I don’t know what the official pronunciation is, but I always read it as Ooo-bee-soft.
I always heard it as if it was an insult. Like they hated their customers.
YOU BE SOFT, BIIIITCH.
I guess I never heard the accents that produced “istoric” in reference to the false americanized version of “an Historic event” such as any time Robert Picard (Richard Woolsey) appeared in Stargate
My understanding was that you say “an historical account” instead of "a historical account* to differentiate from the phonetically identical “ahistorical account”, which means almost precisely the opposite.
Upper-class British used to ‘drop the h’ on words with a french root to show off their education. Historic had a silent H but hawk did not, for example.
Side note: H has a silent H, it’s “aitch” not “haitch”.
This is the general rule, but you’ll run into problems with words that are pronounced differently with different dialects.
Example:
A herb / An herb
I’d say ‘an herb’ because where I’m from, the h is silent.
But there are many places where it isn’t silent.
A bunch of other comments are using ‘history’ of an example of this… but I’ve not heard of a dialect where the h in history is silent.
That’s not a problem at all. Your example proves the rule: it’s about how the first letter sounds, not what the first letter is.
Th’nk ofa som uk accents, lack’n the aytch, comin’ out 'istory & tha like
Well, that does count as a dialect, but I literally would not be able to comprehend it in person.
I have the PNW dialect, aka, the accent that is trained into every newcaster and hollywood actor, because basically every English speaker can understand it without difficulty.
The type O blood of English dialects, if you would.
Is that similar to Transatlantic speak? Transatlantic comes from pronunciation and pitch that carried well on poor radio signals preceeding the digital age. Meanwhile, I swear it was something in the MidAtlantic US that won most neutral English accent… Or most neutral American at the least.
Kinda sorta.
The actual accent itself doesn’t sound the same, but I think you’re getting at how it came to be.
The PNW dialect/accent is basically a subset of the Californian dialect/accent, with a few differences.
It arose as being very close to ‘General American’ because it was the last, or latest part of the US to be settled by significant numbers of English speakers, and is an amalgamation of the accents of English speakers from many different pre-exsting American dialect regions.
People from the PNW often do not even realize that they have an accent, as it is so close to a sort of normalized middle ground of other US American English accents.
TransAtlantic accent/dialect specifically arose because of the technology, as you say… and also I think a bit from social circles of basicslly upper class NorthEasterners who had enough money to regulalry interact with actual UK English speakers themselves, whereas PNW accent/dialect seems to not have arisen intentionally, and isn’t as strongly tied to the upper social class of the region.
Seattle and Portland’s first major population booms were the result of the Alaska goldrush near the end of the 1800’s, with basically lower class people coming from all across American (and other parts of the world) either using them as a last port to stock up and buy supplies before heading north, or setting up a business to sell those supplies to those people… and a whole lot of them returned to Seattle or Portland after the Alaska gold rush.
https://pacificupperleft.com/does-the-pacific-northwest-have-an-accent/
Funny. I’m a Seattle native so I too have the PNW accent. Fun trick to show someone with our accent that we actually do have an accent, ask them to pronounce cot and caught. We pronounce them the same lol 🥲
YSK: don’t use an. it adds nothing to the language. except maybe to provide a enallage
