I was right. Dumb is an growth industry.
That’s the way I rationalize it myself (along with your explanation for “x-ray”), but we have to realize that you don’t “spell” a long “u” sound with a “y” – it just bears the same sound. Ditto for the “x” in “x-ray” sounding as if it’s spelled “ex”. The point is that it ian’t spelled that way. So the rule is that if it sounds like there should be an initial consonant, use “a”, but otherwise, use “an”. But we could as well encode the rules as a series of exceptions.
My friends in linguistics go nuts when I talk this way. They don’t generally use terms like “long u”, and think it quaint that I do.
“X-ray” and “X-file” do begin with a vowel sound. Without a vowel, the letter “x” (or any consonant would be well-night unpronounceable in English.
ALL consonants have pronounceable names thatare explicitly spelled with vowels to make them pronounceable. Any good dictionary will list “ex” as the name of the letter “x”. see also: “aitch”, “en” , “em”, “dee”, “cee”, etc. This may be confusing, because we don’t consciously decide to say “aitch” when we pronounce “H”, any more than we *consciously" say the word “two” when we see a “2”-- yet I think we’d all agree that numerals have no phonetic pronunciation.
If you doubt that there is a distinction between the pronunciation of a symbol and its name, try pronouncing the pseudo-words ‘a2e’ (2 as a consonant) or ‘z2n’ (2 as a vowel). You’ll be forced to list the names of the corresponding characters and indeed, you’ll also list the names of the other letters in the pseudo-word, rather than using their phonic equivalent, because the numeral ‘2’ has no phonic equivalent. This is one of those unspoken rules we all pick up by example… The corresponding made-up pseudo-words “afe” or “zon” can be pronounced no matter what because ‘a-e’ and ‘z-n’ conform to common constructions in English, and the inserted letter does have an associated phonetic sound.
On another topic: Why are we dwelling on the 39,600 Google examples of "an great, when Google lists over 16,800,000 examples of “a great”?
If you look at how my search is constructed, you’ll see that it includes a hyphen, which (like all symbol characters), is automatically stripped out by the engine before the search is conducted. This is an advanced Google technique that is useful when searching for phrases (e.g. german-shepherd-cat is equivalent to “german shepard cat”). It has the advantage that it occurs after the “common word recognition” check which normally strips words like “a” out of a search.
Since this is the SDMB --and specifically the GQ forum-- I trust that this search tip will come in handy for many of you.
It would have been clearer if I had said that “a{consonant}e” and “z{vowel}n” conform to common English word construction rules, and are universally pronounceable if any letter from the specified class is inserted. “2” is neither a consonant nor a vowel, so we insert a word in it’s place, depending on context (e.g. “twenty” in “24” or "two"in “52”. This becomes especially clear in “12”
Sorry if I caused any confusion.
It still amazes me how misspellings and typos become ubiquitous in threads about grammar and/or spelling.
Even funnier? CurtC was right.
I added the “great” to the sentence and forgot to change the article. The boss was pointing out my error, not telling me to use “an.”
I would feel much, much worse if this weren’t Friday and I weren’t in the mood to laugh at myself.
:smack:
No, he’s an numbskull.
It might be an advanced google technique, but it’s completely unnecessary in this case. Googling “a great” gives the exact same results as “a-great.” When you put quotes around a phrase in google, it doesn’t strip out articles and other common words.
Man 1: a 'alibut
Man 2: what?
Man 1: (enunciates carefully) an halibut
Two incorrect examples, courtesy of the Eric the half-a-bee sketch.
Kudos to you, Gazelle, for copping to your [sub]small[/sub] error.
And red faces all around for those who cast derision at your boss.
Peace,
mangeorge
If you want to force google to include common words in a search, prefix them with +
That doesn’t seem to be the problem. It’s the way Google equates hyphens and spaces, when within quotation marks. Is there a way to search “A{hyphen}B” without also getting “A{space}B”?
I thought perhaps +“a-b” -“a b” might have done it, but it doesn’t.
I don’t think there’s a way to get it to specifically include hyphens; it’s only interested in alphanumerics in the indexes, as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I got a cite. Fowler, H. Ramsey & Aaron, Jane E. (1989), _The_Little,Brown_Handbook, 4th Edition. Little, Brown and Company. Page 713, in the Glossary of Usage (formatting omitted):
a, an: Use a before words beginning with consonant sounds, including those spelled with an initial pronounced h and those spelled with vowels that are sounded as consonants: a historian, a one-o’clock class, a university. Use an before words that begin with vowel sounds, including those spelled with an initial silent h: an orgy, an L, an honor.
When you use an abbreviation or acronym in writing, the article that precedes it depends on how the abbreviation is to be read: She was one an HEW undersecretary (HEW is to be read as three seperate letters, and h is pronouced “aitch.”) Many Americans apposed a SALT treaty. (SALT is to be read as one word, salt.)
I would guess your boss inserted “great” between “an” and “oportunity” after-the-fact.
quothz has the definitive cite from the Little, Brown Handbook (Fowler).
The “n” in “an” functions to make a separation, so we don’t have two subsequent vowel sounds.
Note how the “e” sound in “the” changes in the same circumstances. “The excellent” differs from “the great” as thee does from thuh.
I think proper usage of aught and naught work the same way, but this is not very clear to me. In fact, it may be that the use of aught and oh pronunciations for zero may work that way also: nineteen aught-one versus nineteen oh-two.
It may be that we should use twenty-naught-one, twenty-noh-two, twenty-noh-three to be correct, but I ain’t starting no campaign on the subject.
Grammar was never my favorite thing.I go by feel and sound much more than rules.(A lifetime of reading helps.)
So,I’m missing something here.
Why are words that begin with a “long u” sound said to begin with a “y” sound?
- a y-nicorn?
- a y-nified field theory?
I fail to hear any y sounds in there.
They begin with a “yuh-” sound
yoo-nicorn
yoo-nified.
Hit submit instead of preview.
yoo-nicorn and yoo-nified instead of -oon-icorn or oonified, which is how they would sound if they were pronounced with an initial long U.
There aren’t many words I can think of at the moment that actually do start with the long U sound - except loanwords from other languages… Uber springs to mind.
Thanks,TellMeI’mNotCrazy.
I knew it would be a d’oh/forehead slapping matter,but I turned it over and over in my head,and none of my brain cells fell into the proper slots.
Glad to have helped 