When I speak I will occasionally say something like “I’m going to buy a unicorn.” or “Gee I could never learn to ride a unicycle.”
So am I speaking improper English by saying a unicorn instead of an unicorn. Or as I suspect is U sometimes acting like a consonant in occasions like that?
I think “a” is correct with words starting with “u” when the “U” has a “y” sound: unicorn,uniform, unicycle, etc. However, otherwise, “an” is correct: unknown, unusual, etc.
If you’re riding your unicorn or unicycle to the barber shop to get an haircut, you might be in real trouble. Don’t the French and English consider the letter “H” to act as a vowel in those cases, too?
(Specifically, I remember an A. C. Clarke short story–parhaps a tale from the White Hart–which uses the term “an haircut.”)
In those cases, the u is being pronounced as y, which is a consonantal sound. Going off of the written word is not a good indicator of which form to use, because often, vowels will be used consonantally.
I was walking up Broadway you know and there’s this incredible looking Swedish girl having a Cappuccino across the street from Lincoln Center. I started talking to her you know - She said her name was Lola. Her English wasn’t too good you know - but we wound up spending about 5 hours together just hanging out you know. So We go back to my place - we get high - we get really into each other man. It was love about to happen…I’m serious. And then all of a sudden she gets up and she says, she says “Hey, I really gotta leave”.
Damn.
In addition, you sometimes you “an” before a word beginning with a consonant – if the consonant isn’t pronounced: “an hour.”
The rule is very simple. “A” for words that have a consonant sound at the beginning, “an” for words that have a vowel sound at the beginning.
Thus:
“An hour.”
“A house.”
“An umbrella.”
“A unicorn.”
I always thought ‘a’ and ‘an’ were interchangeable by what sounded better, isn’t the whole idea of changing a to an so it makes the sentence flow nicely. I say do what you want, screw the rules
Wow, that explains something that’s been bothering me for a while - sometimes the paper will refer to something as being “an historic” event. Always bugged me. Thanks.
But almost always, what sounds better is dictated by the rule friedo gave. Can anyone think of a counter-example?
Unfortunately, spelling is confusing – French and English both. The important part is not how a word is spelt, but how’s it’s pronounced. The initial sound in a word – consonant or vowel – determines which article is used.
As was stated earlier, the [y] sound is a consonant sound. This is due to the way the lip and tongue work when pronouncing it, constricting the vocal tract (although to a lesser degree than in other consonants).
The word you’re looking for is “aspirated.” In some French words beginning with an [h], the h is pronounced – aspirated. In other words (and there seems to be no pattern), the h is unaspirated – unpronounced, and the first sound in the word is the vowel sound. A. C. Clarke’s “'aircut” would seem to be like that. (We’ve all seen/'eard Cockney accents where they don’t pronounce the initial [h].)
I agree with friedo on general principles, but just to be difficult . . .
Isn’t “an historical” correct?
Well, as Americans (myself included) pronounce it, I’ve always heard is as “a historic event.”
However, BBC World is my main source of news now in Hungary (just sick of CNN) and I know for certain that most of their commentators will say “an historic occasion” and pronounce it as “anistoric occasion” with no discernible “h” sound.
I have observed that the Brits put less effort into their H’s than Americans, making the Brittish H closer to a vowel than a consonent. Thus, many Brits are inclined to say “an historic” wheras most Americans say “a historic.”
Just wanted to add a couple interesting examples from the Associated Press (USA) style guide [which is a definitive source for quite a lot of writing]. It lays down the law as
"use a before consonant sounds: a historic event, a one-year term (sounds as if it begins with a w), a united stand (sounds like ‘you’).
“Use an before vowel sounds: an energy crisis, an honorable man (the h is silent), an NBA record (sounds like it begins with the letter e), an 1890s celebration.”
I believe that would be AN historic event…
*What the French call “h aspiré” isn’t really aspirated. They just call it that. The reason is that such words beginning with h- (like haricot, haine, Halles are of Frankish origin. When they first entered the language, the /h/ sound was still being pronounced by the Germanic Franks. The h- inherited from Latin words had stopped being pronounced centuries earlier in Vulgar Latin, perhaps as early as the first century BC. So when the aspirated Frankish /h/ appeared in some loanwords, it was different enough for the theoretical distinction to be maintained until now, even though the French stopped pronouncing it many centuries ago. The only distinction is that articles are not elided (le haricot versus l’honneur). The break between the vowels in le haricot is not an /h/ sound but a mild glottal stop or hamzah.
You can’t say that “silent h” is a vowel. It’s followed by a vowel. The silent h itself is a zero, which is the word used by phoneticists to mean ‘nonexistent’.
Using “an” before a real pronounced /h/ sound is a remnant of Elizabethan English. 500 years ago, they said “an” before all initial hs, pronounced or not. In the King James Bible, you can see “an house,” “an harlot,” etc. This practice has been long dying out, and the last vestige is for some old British fogeys to say “an” when the initial /h/ sound is in an unstressed syllable. Thus: “a history” but “an historian.” (But then why don’t they say “an Hungarian”???)
When Robert Browning used the phrase “such an one” he was being deliberately archaic. In Middle English, one didn’t start with a /w/ sound but a vowel sound, so “an one” was acceptable Middle English. In the 19th century, of course, you could only get away with that in poetry, where archaisms could persist many centuries after they’d become obsolete in prose.
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, one of the characters is a real-life Irish author named George Russell. He went by the pen name of AE. In Ulysses, the poet Stephen Dedalus (Joyce himself, fictionalized) borrows a five-pound note from George Russell. And then he says:
*A E I O U
The point was that this came from an American style guide. As a speaker of American English, I can imagine myself saying “historic” in way that requires an “a” or in a way that requires an “an”. The difference is very subtle.
But you know I was really flipped out you know and she asked me if I’m angry or something I said of course I’m angry man this isn’t high school or anything you know so I’m feeling really cavalier and I say ah…call me if you want to…huh, yeah…call me if you want to So she rang me up and she says, “Hey! Do you wanna go out?” Huh, Do I wanna go out