In American pronunciation, typically, there’s a tiny little glottal pause between the terminal “uh” in “pasta” and the initial “ih” in “isn’t.”
But in many British dialects, an R-ish sound is inserted at that transition point, to separate the phonemes. “The pasta rizzn’t cooked.”
They have not gone as far as to adjust the spelling, the way “a” is explicitly written as “an” in the original example that kicked off this thread. But the function of the pronunciation quirk is the same.
When writing a SDMB post I use “SDMB” as an abbreviation rather than an acronym, and expect the reader to mentally unpack it — on an unconscious level. (Unless the reader reads the post aloud, and then I expect them to consciously say “Straight Dope Message Board.”)
Personally I never use the acronym Es-De-Em-Be in conversation, so I don’t write “an SDMB” in my posts.
I think this is pretty much settled even before it was posted here but I’ll add a vote for “a” vs. “an” depending on how it’s pronounced. “An” before a word pronounced before a vowel sound and “a” before a consonant sound. “An FBI agent…” “A FEMA employee…”
You pronounce that “earl” sometimes? Never heard that.
I agree with using “an” but I’d be inclined to turn the sentence round to “a post on SDMB” - it just seems to flow better (style rather than “correct” grammar).
It is, AFAIK, the only invariable rule in English and is entirely dependent on the pronunciation of the following word. Which is correct “A unionized …” or “An unionized…”?
“A unionized worker” but “An unionized solution”
As for the OP, of course you would say “An Ess Dee Em Bee” but “A straight dope message board”.
But it’s exactly such cases that demonstrate that the rule is consistent: It depends on pronunciation, not on spelling. And the pronunciation of initial “h” can vary in different dialects. (And American and British English are mostly the same on this, although they vary in a few cases. But they also vary within each group of dialects.)
It’s “a horse” in most dialects of English, except maybe in Cockney.
It’s “an hour” in all dialects of English of which I am aware. (Most words with a silent initial “h” are derived from French, where “h” is silent, although in some such words the “h” is pronounced.)
It’s “a herb” in British English, but “an herb” in American English, where the “h” is silent.
Then we get to “historic,” which is variable in pronunciation. Almost everyone will say “a history,” since the stress is on the first syllable and the “h” is clearly pronounced. However, because “historic” is stressed on the second syllable, some people will say “an historic event” because the “h” becomes softer or disappears in this case. Either way is correct, depending on your own pronunciation.
Compare “napron” to the similar “napkin.” Why the n moved in one and not the other is a mystery.
Other words that have changed were adder (the snake) and auger. Orange changed, too, though I’m not sure if the n was split off or the o added.
Some words picked up an N from an, such as newt or nickname.
An was the word for “one”. English didn’t really have definite articles at the time.
Not in English. When it arrived in English via Old French/Anglo Norman it had already lost the “n.” It’s from Persian narang (and earlier Indian forms); Spanish retains the “n” in naranja
I was going to bring this up, having had to wrestle with it myself on a few occasions. I personally think the best way to go when you don’t know how the reader will pronounce the words is “a(n)”. But I also agree that for words that might be either initialisms or acronyms, you should choose the article that shows what you consider the standard pronunciation of the abbreviated form. I would, in general, not expect anything I write in one of those abbreviated forms to be pronounced spelled out in full, but I would be able to show whether it should be pronounced as an initialism or an acronym.
This also reminds me of one of the World of Warcraft Classic raids which was invariably written as “BWL”, but since each phrase segment was only one syllable and the pronunciation of “W” is 3 syllables, some people maintained it should always be pronounced “Blackwing Lair” even if written “BWL”.
No. UK RP behaves pretty much the same as US English.
The one major difference is that an initial “h” is treated as though it’s a vowel. There are times when US English does that (e.g, “an honor”), but the British consider the “h” as a vowel far more commonly. Thus, “an historic occasion.”
It’s more accurate to say that the “h” is silent. Since initial “h” is always followed by a vowel sound, effectively the word is treated as beginning with a vowel.
As I mentioned above, most words with silent “h” are of French origin, since “h” is silent in French. However, this varies. It is probably true that British English tends to drop the “h” more frequently than American English, and some British dialects such as Cockney always or almost always drop it.
Sometimes “h” is silent in French (e.g. l’honneur), and sometimes it is… still silent, but “aspirated” (e.g. la harpe). If you turned that into English, you would get an honor / a harp.
I’d been mystified too. Thanks to @bordelond for clarifying.
Chemistry terminology is full of traps for the unwary. Like the time back in HS or early college when I pronounced “anion” like “onion” but with a short “a” sound on the front and “cation” like “ration” with a hard “c” = “k” sound on the front. Cue laughter from all but me.
