Why do people say so-and so is “an historian” (rather than “a historian”?)
You wouldn’t say “an History professor”, or “an hippie”, or “an hit man”.
Not all people do.
I like this take on it:
The first people I remember hearing say an historic, an historical, or an historian are TV news people, and I first remember hearing it in the 1980’s. I think it’s just a pompous affectation, as it doesn’t fit the accepted pattern for using “an” in the U.S.
Now others will post and disagree with me.
“A historian” is correct if, like me, you pronounce the “h” clearly. “An historian” also happens to be an accepted form (especially if you have an accent that doesn’t really aspirate the “h”,) but it sounds a bit silly and forced to my ears if you don’t have one of those accents.
On a similar note: I remember seeing a legal notice wherein a company, " … having an usual place business in the town of …".
The accepted explanation I’ve heard is that “an” is to be used before a word begining with an “h” if and only if the stress falls in the second syllable (or possibly later) of that word.
An historian is grammatically correct, because the stress on the word historian falls in the 2nd syllable. Same with “an hysterical event”.
Because the “u” in user makes the sound of a consonant, “y”, user would use ‘a’ beforehand, AFAIK.
It’s my understanding that we use “a” when the next word starts with a consonant and “an” when it starts with a vowel. “H” is a corner case. I’ve personally heard people who don’t pronounce it at the beginnings of words. To them, “history” or “human” sounds like “iss-tory” or “you-man”. Those people use “an” before those words. People who say “an” and pronounce the “h” are using a weird affectation.
I was taught that ‘an’ is used when the pronunciation of a word would have a vowel sound.
So it would ‘an honor’, or ‘a historian’.
But I end up saying things like ‘an historian’, probably just from hearing it done by others.
So would you say “an Hungarian”? Why or why not?
I have never heard a non-Cockney say “istorian.” For that matter, I’ve never heard a Cockney say it either (but only cause I haven’t heard one have occasion to say that word." So I find this explanation dubious. :dubious:
First of all, “an” is used when the following word begins with a vowel sound, not simply a vowel. That’s why we say “a user,” rather than “an user” (the “u” is pronounced like “yoo,” which begins with a consonant sound.
And except for Cockney, where have you heard people who drop the “h” from the beginning of a word? That is truly bizarre. The rule I learned (admittedly a long time ago) is that if the first syllable is stressed (as in “history”), use “a.” If the first syllable is unstressed (as in “historical”), use “an.” Either way, the “h” is pronounced.
Pretty much it. For something like “an honor”, we tend to elide the two words into “anahner”, which is much easier for the English tongue than "a honor’. See also: an automobile, an ellipsis, a histogram, a hysterectomy, a hologram, etc.
An is used when the initial ‘h’ is silent (though of course not with a word like user that begins with a consonant sound :smack:). I pronounce history stressing the first syllable, but historical and historian are stressed on the second syllable, with the ‘h’ then dropping. Hence: “a history” but “an historical event.” For me this is not an “affectation” – the alternate form would be awkward to say. There’s more to the silence of the ‘h’ than the stress, of course, since honor is stressed on the first syllable but still has silent ‘h’ so “an honor.”
French is more difficult since the ‘h’ is sometimes treated as a consonant even when silent. On two separate occasions I had to intervene when a tourist asked a Parisian for directions to “Les Alles.” (It’s “Les *Halles.”)
You want bizarre? Some Appalachian dialects add an h-sound to the beginning of words with initial vowel sounds under certain circumstances.
Here’s what Bryan Garner says in his Dictionary of Modern American Usage:
I actually sent this question in to Cecil in the late 80’s when I first discovered the Straight Dope. (Good God, that was over 20 years ago…) and, as far as I know, the bastard *still *hasn’t answered it. :dubious:
My question centered around the word “history” also, but the words “historic” and “history”, not “historian”. I can’t think of a time I heard “an historian”, so for folks that are having trouble with that word, substitute “historic”. Not that it matters one iota.
This is something I noticed in the 80’s from newscasters, as california jobcase suggests. Like cj, I thought it to be a pompous affectation as well, and it annoyed the hell out of me. It still does.
The words “history” and “historic” both have 3 syllables, and the first two are exactly the same. So to say “I bought a history book today”, but in the same breath say “This is an historic time for our country.” makes no sense to me. It doesn’t sound better. It doesn’t roll off the tongue naturally. It just seemed like someone decided that this was how they were going to say it, it was adopted by the talking heads/reporters all over the country, and that was that. Forever stuck with a most annoying grammatical quirk.
This, sadly has been replaced on the annoy-o-meter with the pronunciation of “negotiation” by the TV talking heads.
It is - “neg-oh-she-a-shun”, not “neg-oh-see-a-shun”, you pompous fockers.
I have many, many English stylebooks and guides, and about 1993 I pulled them all out and answered this question quite thoroughly for a local writer’s newsletter.
The basic idea is that in English, as in some other languages, exceptions are made to make certain things easier to pronounce, and this is one of them. The easiest rule is that if the H is pronounced, it’s preceded by just an A, but if the H is not pronounced, it’s preceded by AN.
So for this reason someone will say or write, “an MIT student” or “An NAACP member” because those are pronounced by essentially spelling out the acronym, but will say “a MADD meeting” or “a NAMBLA member” because those acronyms are pronounced as words.
H is a special case only because it is often not pronounced, and it’s a problem because whether it is pronounced or not depends on the speaker’s region, the derivation of the word, and various other factors.
So one of my stylebooks insists that any word beginning in H that comes from the French language should be preceded by “an.” I can only assume that the authors of this stylebook heard people pronouncing “history” and “hotel” as if they were French words.
Another one (The Compleat Stylist, I happen to have this one out and not packed away) says to use AN if the H is not pronounced and if the emphasis is on a syllable other than the first (as in “historical”). This one gets real cumbersome, and is hardly ever followed, except for the word “historical.”
The fact is that some speakers will say “'abitual” or “'istorical” rather than sounding the H. This is not true of speakers where I grew up (although, oddly, that statement is less true for “habitual” than for “historical,” and I don’t know why). The N doesn’t really perform its function in those cases.
But most of the stylebooks sensibly indicate to use “a” or “an” only if the H is not sounded, so if you pronounce the H in “herb” then you say “a herb” and if you don’t, then it’s “an herb.”
“An historian” is grammatically INcorrect according to the majority of my stylebooks, and correct according to a few of them–but really it’s nothing to do with grammar, it’s pronunciation. I do think it’s weird to see it written as “an historian” and it would also be hard for me to say, but if you’re following The Compleat Stylist, it’s compleatly correct.
There was a big stink about this when Time magazine put Geraldine Ferraro on its cover with the headline “A Historic Choice”. I’m pretty sure we’ve discussed this on the SDMB a few times.
I think it sticks around with the word “historic” precisely because it sounds somewhat pretentious. Something that is historic has great importance, and thus one wants to be a bit pretentious about it. “An historic occasion” seems just a bit bigger to me than “a historic occasion.”
But using it on any non-emphasizing adjective (or non-adjective) sounds much more odd to me.
BTW, An historic occasion still has the [h]. This also further emphasizes the adjective.
Please cite with a link to an audio or video file, someone audibly pronouncing 'istorian, or 'Ungarian, or some other word missing its initial h- sound, that isn’t said by a Cockney* (e.g. Michael Caine) or someone deliberately mimicking a Cockney (e.g. Dick Van Dyke or Peter Noone, and then only if you pronounce “an 'Enery” with 3 syllables for humorous pseudo-Cockney effect).
Cause I ain’t buyin it. If it’s all so common as claimed by some, making it an actual widespread norm of pronunciation in the English-speaking world instead of a marginal local dialect, you ought to be able to come up with lots of audio cites easily.
As for the claimed “weakly pronounced” initial h, I’m not hearing it either. The /h/ sound is either there or it isn’t. As far as I can tell, this is a weakly thought-out rationalization. And “an historic” takes more effort to pronounce than “a historic.”
*Or Jamaican, e.g. Bob Marley singing “Would you let the system get on top your 'ead again?” No, dread, no.