~~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 post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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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.
Really, we're covering basic grammar now?
You know there are english speaking folks outside of the US/UK.
Mindblowing, I know.
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.
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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
I appreciate the tips. Even if they're grammar related. I need all the help I can get 😮💨
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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.
Same with Arabic when Alexander became Skender and Alzheimer's became zheimers.
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).
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Ha, that's really interesting. Swedish has an interesting example of this as well.
Plural you ("y'all", basically) used to be "i", but because of an archaic inflection rule, there were often an "n" at the end of a word before "i" (like, "när kommen i?"; "when are y'all coming?"). Because of this, "i" eventually turned into "ni" since the n of the previous word merged with i.
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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.
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.
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Our mouths really want to flow vowel->>consonant->> vowel->>consonant->> and various languages all have their ways of helping that happen.
The problem is not the rule, but that the many exceptions apply to the written word, whereas they are based on phonological reasons and the same letter can have several pronunciations in English.
yeah... like "a house" vs. "an honor" It's easy: the +n is a binding sound to avoid a hard stop between two words when the first ends in a vowel and the second begins with one. A hard stop only applies to spoken language, so the +n should be applied where the spoken next sound is a vowel.
For example: "A "large hadron collider"-like setup", vs. "An LHC-like setup"
An historic post.
A Ukraine? Really? Why couldn't you use something practical like a university.
perhaps because russia initiated a ukranian invasion on february 24 2022.
This is also true for initialisms, which are acronyms in which each letter is pronounced individually.
"A NASA project" would not become "an NASA project" because nobody pronounces each individual letter of NASA, they just say it as one word.
"An FBI agent" would always be correct, and "a FBI agent" would always be incorrect, because FBI is never pronounced as a word, and each letter is pronounced individually.
NASA vs NSA makes this more apparent too. For example:
A NASA investigation
vs
An NSA investigation
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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.
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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
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".
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.
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