I feel like this must have been covered before, but I couldn’t find it in a search.
It seems to come up periodically in conversation that, strictly speaking, the correct indefinite singular article to use before the word “historic” is “an”, rather than “a”. For the life of me, I can’t understand why.
“An historic” does not roll off my tongue smoothly at all - “a historic” seems much more natural to me.
Further, I can’t think of any other words that start with the “hi-” sound that use “an” rather than “a”. For that matter, “history” is preceded by “a”, according to its usage in the M-W definition:
A history
A hysterectomy
A hysterical occasion An historic occasion- ???
WAG but I would say that it is because historic is pronounced with a silent h like istoric. Then since the first sound is a vowel it gets an. Just a guess though…
they do this with “h” words a lot in the old days. I think…b/c in history class whenever I read that, I wonder the same thing.
Like “an hysteria” or something like that…
This has been a pet peeve of mine for as long as I can remember. I think there’s no valid reason for this usage. Several friends tried to convince me it’s because ahistoric is a word, and it’s to avoid confusion. But, as has been pointed out, we don’t do this for any other “h” word.
No one would confuse “a hysterectomy” for “ahysterectomy,” which, obviously, is the opposite of an hysterectomy…well, you get the point.
I happen to think it sounds better with ‘an.’ It rolls easily. Say:
“This is an historic occasion.” Quickly. Notice that the ‘h’ sound kind of disappears. That’s the way it’s supposed to sound. If you deliberately force the ‘h’ sound to come out, it sounds bad. History has a definite ‘h’ sound to begin it, but not historic.
Well, many non-english languages (french and german come to mind) don’t pronounce the letter ‘h’. Since English has never been a clean language, and for many years the “king’s English” was actually French, maybe the two mixed a bit…
A HIS-to-ry
A hys-te-REC-tomy
An his-TOR-ic occasion
When the accent falls on the second syllable, many people will soften the pronunciation of the first syllable, almost gliding over it, and definitely reducing the strength of the aspiration in the H.
(For that reason, I have also often heard
An hys-TE-ri-cal occasion)
To the extent that hysterical actually has two accented syllables, hys-TE-ri-CAL, there may be less reduction on the first syllable.
It is also true that many people never use an for any of these words. As long as your pronunciation matches, there is no rule to demand that you drop an N on the article.
It’s starting to sound like this whole thing depends on subtle personal or regional variations in pronunciation of words that start in this fashion - “Just how soft is that ‘H’ sound…?”
I can live with that. I grew up enunciating the “H” fairly strongly in all of the words that have been tossed out as examples - it feels and sounds very forced when I try to place an “an” in front of them. I can attenuate the “H” sound to the point that “an” feels right, but then I feel like I’m not really saying the word any more.
No matter how hard I try, “an hypotenuse” or “an hypothesis” sounds and feels wrong to me. As does “an historic occasion.” “An 'ypotenuse”, spoken with a thick Cockney accent, sounds fine. But that’s not how I talk…
I have hunted around, and can’t seem to find anything definitive online giving out-and-out rules for when to use “a” or “an”. You’re always told to base it on the sound of the following word. As I said before, I think common pronunciation of many of our examples here straddles the line.
Well, as to rules, here is what Hacker says in “A Writer’s Reference (fourth edition)”
“a, an…Problems sometimes arise with words beginning with h. If the h is silent, the word begins with a vowel sound, so use an: an hour, an heir, an honest senator, an honorable deed. If the h is prnounced, the word begins with a consonant sound, so use a: a hospital, a hymn, a historian, a hotel.”
It’s interesting that she uses “a historian” as an example.
It’s an archaism. In the King James Bible, they used “an” even before an accented syllable beginning with h: “an house,” “an harlot.” (Somehow I ge a kick out of saying “an harlot”!)
Ever since then, the “an” before sounded h has been dying out and there’s really no reason at all to keep it up. Even Fowler nearly an hundred (whoops, I mean “a hundred”) years ago was advocating getting rid of it.
Even the ones in favor of it, you’ll notice, never say “an Hungarian”!
