YSK: Use ‘a’ when the word starts with a _consonant sound_, and ‘an’ when it starts with a _vowel sound_
Why you should know: The ‘a’ vs ‘an’ conundrum is not about what letter actually begins the word, but instead about how the sound of the word starts.
For example, the ‘h’ in ‘hour’ is silent, so you would say ‘an hour’ and not ‘a hour’. A trickier example is Ukraine: because the ‘U’ is pronounced as ‘You’, and in this case the ‘y’ is a consonant, you would say “a Ukraine” and not “an Ukraine”.
Tip: when in doubt, sound it out(loud).
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
162 replies
Some modern English words have changed because the leading "n" from the noun migrated over to the article which precedes it, or from the article to the noun.
"Apron" was originally napron, "a napron". "Nickname" was originally ekename (with the first part coming from the same root as "eke", as in "eke out a living"). "An ekename" became "a nekename" and then "a nickname".
I’ll chain on: This is why the english language calls the citrus fruit “Orange,” in a round-about way.
The Persians named them Narangs when they acquired them from Asia, which the Spanish turned into “naranja.” But when they crossed the channel “a naranja” became “an aranja” which eventually became “an orange.”
That's happened in french and Italian too then, "une orange" and "un'arancia". Wild.
Same with Arabic when Alexander became Skender and Alzheimer's became zheimers.
Some examples of this phenomenon in French are “un ombril” -> “un nombril” (a navel, from the latin umbilicus) and “l’ierre” -> “le lierre” (the ivy, from the latin hedera).
just wait 'til you see what they did with "el lagarto"
Ha, that's really interesting. Swedish has an interesting example of this as well.
Plural you ("y'all", basically) used to be "i", but because of an archaic inflection rule, there were often an "n" at the end of a word before "i" (like, "när kommen i?"; "when are y'all coming?"). Because of this, "i" eventually turned into "ni" since the n of the previous word merged with i.
I just learned the bit about an ekename from A Way With Words! Great radio program/podcast.
And don't forget the napple!
Truly an historic effort by OP
An Herculean effort, even.
it's been an honor serving with you
FTFY
I so want to downvote, but will refrain. However the gross feeling remains.
I tip my hat to you.
I hope you get loose vowels.
(/j)
You can take your loose vowels and stick em up your loose bowels
With certain accents that's actually correct
I don’t disagree at all but I know it bugs some people, so here we are.
I used to hate this but legit like it now.
I'm striking "a" from my vocab. Consonants also get an now. "So i gave him an knuckle sandwich." beautiful 🤩
It is very basic stuff tho, anyone who learned enough english to read this post would've already been taught this. Except for native speakers maybe?
Carefully read the comment you're replying to
I missed it. Appreciate you.
Cheers
Exactly. This is a less egregious example of the they're/their dilemma.
Your, you’re
There is / There are (with the wrong pluralisation)
So often...so so often.
This is also true for initialisms, which are acronyms in which each letter is pronounced individually.
"A NASA project" would not become "an NASA project" because nobody pronounces each individual letter of NASA, they just say it as one word.
"An FBI agent" would always be correct, and "a FBI agent" would always be incorrect, because FBI is never pronounced as a word, and each letter is pronounced individually.
NASA vs NSA makes this more apparent too. For example:
A NASA investigationvs
An NSA investigationThey will now!
You make a valid point. One initialism/acronym I can think of that can go both ways is SQL (Standard Query Language). You can either pronounce it as Sequel (thus “a sequel query”), or as individual letters (“an S.Q.L. query”).
I'm not usually that guy but this seems to be the thread for it. Initialisms and acronyms are both types of abbreviation, where you pronounce acronyms as a word (NASA) and initialisms as individual letters (FBI).
I've had meetings at work over this. I had to draw a flow chart.
The separation between acronyms and initialisms isn't as strict as you've described here. Acronym is the older word and people generally use it to mean both acronym and initialism, whereas the latter mostly indicates cases where you read individual letters.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acronym
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=acronym
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=initialism
Really, we're covering basic grammar now?
not everyone (thankfully) are american or british.
True, but this is really basic stuff. I think I learned this for English as 2nd language in primary school. We trust that people here know English well enough to understand the server rules, why then assume they don't know basic grammar?
What makes this different from SVO word order? YSK how to use participles? Did you know about the order of adjective (That one is actually pretty interesting, but i's not basic grammar so it gets to pass). At some point it is ridiculous to try to teach some grammar rules of English in English, and I believe this is well past that point. Even if one doesn't speak the language naturally or have a formal education in it.
Yep, including me.
You know there are english speaking folks outside of the US/UK.
Mindblowing, I know.
Only when it's needed.
With literacy rates in America "hold my beer" low and getting lower, maybe there's a need.
Example: if people pluralize "email" different from "mail", they may need to review.
I like how you tried to be a grammar snob and couldn't even get your example right.
What's wrong in the example?
Edit: oh
I appreciate the tips. Even if they're grammar related. I need all the help I can get 😮💨
Still can’t get things like contractions, apostrophes, too/to, “should of” sorted out. Still plenty of need for reminders.
The vowel sound rule (or a related one) is also used for which vowel sound goes at the end of the definite article "the", that is, the sound the 'e' makes.
Usually the last vowel sound of "the" is a schwa, arguably the most common vowel sound in English, but before another vowel sound, it becomes "ee", or what other European languages might write "i".
There might even be an intrusive y (or j as used in Norse and Germanic languages) depending on the speaker. i.e. "The apple" may well be pronounced "thi(y)apple", and a fellow native speaker wouldn't notice. "The ball" has the usual schwa. As does "the usual schwa" for that matter.
I barely understood this but I've also tried to explain this very thing. I believe it was actually on a post about the pronunciation of 'Data' because I felt there were differences to each but could not explain why for the life of me.
I had never heard this spelled out or identified the pattern myself, even though I’d noticed there were differences. Thank you for sharing! This answers questions I didn’t even know I had.
What about when the next word starts with a schwa? In practice it seems like you change one or the other but not both: "The economy" becomes either "thee uh-conomy" or "tha ee-conomy" but not either combined alternative. Does this rule hold?
Schwa is a vowel, so it would be the long e, not schwa on "the".
A possible exception is when the following word begins with a long e, and people might actually break the rule to make it clear where one word ends and the other begins. Or rather they insert a glottal stop before the vowel sound - I believe this is called "hard attack" - and since a glottal stop is technically a consonant, that allows the rule-break.
That is, something like "the eel" could go either way, but there'd be a very obvious glottal stop before "eel" if the speaker chose the schwa version of "the", and they would have made that choice for clarity, to avoid sounding like they'd said "theel".
Trolling is a art
I can't believe you would make such a simple and obvious mistake. The correct way to say it is "Trolling are a art", ffs.
No, no, it's, "Trolling doth be..."
This is the general rule, but you'll run into problems with words that are pronounced differently with different dialects.
Example:
A herb / An herb
I'd say 'an herb' because where I'm from, the h is silent.
But there are many places where it isn't silent.
A bunch of other comments are using 'history' of an example of this... but I've not heard of a dialect where the h in history is silent.
That’s not a problem at all. Your example proves the rule: it’s about how the first letter sounds, not what the first letter is.
Agreed, it does prove the rule.
...but that doesn't change what I said.
If you're interacting soley through text, you may get into a/an arguments with people who don't know that different dialects pronounce the same words differently.
I didn't say 'this disproves the rule.'
Th'nk ofa som uk accents, lack'n the aytch, comin' out 'istory & tha like
Well, that does count as a dialect, but I literally would not be able to comprehend it in person.
I have the PNW dialect, aka, the accent that is trained into every newcaster and hollywood actor, because basically every English speaker can understand it without difficulty.
The type O blood of English dialects, if you would.
Is that similar to Transatlantic speak? Transatlantic comes from pronunciation and pitch that carried well on poor radio signals preceeding the digital age. Meanwhile, I swear it was something in the MidAtlantic US that won most neutral English accent... Or most neutral American at the least.
Kinda sorta.
The actual accent itself doesn't sound the same, but I think you're getting at how it came to be.
The PNW dialect/accent is basically a subset of the Californian dialect/accent, with a few differences.
It arose as being very close to 'General American' because it was the last, or latest part of the US to be settled by significant numbers of English speakers, and is an amalgamation of the accents of English speakers from many different pre-exsting American dialect regions.
People from the PNW often do not even realize that they have an accent, as it is so close to a sort of normalized middle ground of other US American English accents.
TransAtlantic accent/dialect specifically arose because of the technology, as you say... and also I think a bit from social circles of basicslly upper class NorthEasterners who had enough money to regulalry interact with actual UK English speakers themselves, whereas PNW accent/dialect seems to not have arisen intentionally, and isn't as strongly tied to the upper social class of the region.
Seattle and Portland's first major population booms were the result of the Alaska goldrush near the end of the 1800's, with basically lower class people coming from all across American (and other parts of the world) either using them as a last port to stock up and buy supplies before heading north, or setting up a business to sell those supplies to those people... and a whole lot of them returned to Seattle or Portland after the Alaska gold rush.
https://pacificupperleft.com/does-the-pacific-northwest-have-an-accent/
Funny. I'm a Seattle native so I too have the PNW accent. Fun trick to show someone with our accent that we actually do have an accent, ask them to pronounce cot and caught. We pronounce them the same lol 🥲
Also interesting, in Ukrainian, the U is pronounced "oo", so if we said it the way they did, it would be "an Ukraine".
Don't even get me started on the fucked-up anglicized versions of Slavic words. Fucking Kruschev and Gorbachev...
Actually Khrushchev. For some reason, х gets converted to kh. The rest is slightly stupid but at least understandable why it is so - щ was historically ш+ч, thus sh+ch (this pronunciation is still normal in Ukrainian, but not in Russian anymore), and the 'e' is just based on the usual spelling.
Uhhh I actually might need an example? Just one, though?
The Cyrillic character ё is pronounced as "yo", but when preceded by some consonants, it becomes an "o". It is consistently mistranslated and mispronounced by anglophones. The correct pronunciation of "Gorbachev" (Горбачёв) is "Gorbachov" and it should be written as such. The other, Хрущёв, is even worse.
Last time I saw someone say that anglicized words should be spelled as they should be pronounced, they were downvoted and shamed for being a prescriptivist.
Don’t forget that ‘h’ is an exception and counts as a vowel: “a hat”edit literally i am wrong about this why did i write that
Give me an hour and I'm sure I could find a counter-example
don’t even need an hour. “herb” has multiple regional pronunciations and so can receive both treatments depending on the context.
also my original comment was just wrong i don’t even know how i got to the point of writing that. “an hour” is the standard treatment of words starting with vowel sounds—the letters themselves don’t matter.
but “h” is treated as a consonant. which it is. duh. i feel so dumb lol.
There are several people who will say "an historic" while fully pronouncing the H and acting all smug and proper about it.
OMG THATS WHAT I WAS REMEMBERING TY
This edit made me laugh
Don't worry we've all been there
i think my blood sugar was low or sumthin lmao
Why would you use Ukraine as the example word instead of uniform?
I'm pretty sure I've heard "the Ukraine" been pronounced both ways often enough.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#:~:text=US%20ambassador%20William%20Taylor%20said,both%20grammatically%20and%20politically%20incorrect.
Dr Geoff Lindsey has a lot to say about this.
That was fantastic and a must-view for this topic.
You can't use any article in front of Ukraine. Not even "the". Just like it's "India", not a/an/the India. It is Britain, but it is also The United Kingdom. For India, you can use The Republic of India.
A good example for your case can be union. It is a union, not an union, because union starts with the sound yu.
Should've been "A Ukrainian" probably.
This. Until the above comment, it didn’t occur to me I used the wrong noun.
University would have been a better example.
You just wanted to use an unique example. It's a honest mistake.
a Ukraine war would be greatly destabilizing for a European peace
The problem is not the rule, but that the many exceptions apply to the written word, whereas they are based on phonological reasons and the same letter can have several pronunciations in English.
yeah... like "a house" vs. "an honor" It's easy: the +n is a binding sound to avoid a hard stop between two words when the first ends in a vowel and the second begins with one. A hard stop only applies to spoken language, so the +n should be applied where the spoken next sound is a vowel.
For example: "A "large hadron collider"-like setup", vs. "An LHC-like setup"
I guess I never heard the accents that produced "istoric" in reference to the false americanized version of "an Historic event" such as any time Robert Picard (Richard Woolsey) appeared in Stargate
Upper-class British used to 'drop the h' on words with a french root to show off their education. Historic had a silent H but hawk did not, for example.
Side note: H has a silent H, it's "aitch" not "haitch".
My understanding was that you say "an historical account" instead of "a historical account* to differentiate from the phonetically identical "ahistorical account", which means almost precisely the opposite.
yeah this was kinda confusing when I was a kid because I was told that it was 100% about what letter starts a word. like an S for example. an... S...
didn't help that my mom would argue that it would be "a S" instead of an, even though an always felt more correct .
Kids are frequently taught that letters are vowels (or consonants) when it’s actually the sounds they represent, and there’s not a 1:1 mapping between letters and sounds.
It gets even more (or maybe less?) confusing when you realize that the word for the letter S is ess.
Pretty simple enough for us Deaf folks.
Cant you just memorize the letter? Aeiou?
I was referring to how words sound out...
How am I supposed to know stuff like 'h' in hour is silent.
Does spellcheck work?
I'm curious on what others' thoughts are on this: do you say/write "a history" or "an history"? I personally use "a history", but i've seen significant usage of "an history". Do people not pronounce the 'h' in "history"?
A history - but “historical” can be either. A historical fact or an historical fact, both work for me.
Definitely "a history" for me but someone who drops the h for accent reasons, eg a cockney accent, would likely say "an 'istory".
How they would write it, I'm not sure.
We pronounce it with a hard H sound here in Canada, so it would be "a history"
However we pronounce "herb" with a silent H sound, so it's "an herb".
There was a historic aluminium discovery at the laboratory.
Cockney i'nn'it guv'na.
When I’ve heard people say it with “an”, they’ve always pronounced the h, which definitely sounds weird to me.
That sounds weird because it is weird.
I think that sort of thing is from people who have read it without hearing it, or are blindly copying others without thinking about it.
Our mouths really want to flow vowel->>consonant->> vowel->>consonant->> and various languages all have their ways of helping that happen.
I've seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:
https://youtu.be/nCe7Fj8-ZnQ
TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of "a(n)", "the" and "to" for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.
You may say 'dialect', I'll say 'failed student', potato, potato.
A elephant?
Sound it out. The first sound is a vowel sound so "an elephant".
But it’s L.
Please tell me you are joking.
Ha ha yes But no. That’s not how an E sounds.
How would you pronounce:
Al, as in Allen?
La, as in Law?
El, as in Elope?
Le, as in Level?
Ill, as in... Ill?
Li, as in Lick?
Ol, as in Oligarchy?
Lo, as in Logistics?
Ul, as in Ultimate?
Lu, as in Luminate?
Just because the letter 'L' is generally pronounced 'el' on its own does not mean the 'e' sound is not a vowel.
Its 'an elephant' because 'e' is a vowel, and that's the first pronounced sound.
Its 'a lever', because 'l' is a consonant, and that's the first pronounced sound.
... Is English not your first language, or have you not graduated middle school yet?
An historic post.
I think the difficulty people have is when writing English down. In speech they will generally get this stuff right automatically, but when it's on paper "a
historyhonour" can easily look right even though it's not.EDIT - I am dumb.
How is “a history” not correct? The h is not silent.
You're right, I've made an utter arse of that, ha ha! I meant to type "honour".
Nah, i use whichever i feel like in the moment. Sometimes a double vowel sound sounds better.
“a apple” has more flavor to it than “an apple” and i acknowledge how cursed that makes me
Not an 'awk an orc. Not a flying 'awk, one of em ground orcs
Historic
An ‘istoric occasion (if you don’t pronounce the H)
A historic occasion (if you do)
It’s all about the sounds, not the letters.
I'm a native English speaker, not fluent in any other languages, and I still fuck up it's / its on a regular basis.
I’m under the impression that mistakes like it’s/its tend to be more common among native speakers than among people who learn the language as teenagers/grown-ups. I might be wrong, though, it’s not like I have any data on the subject.
no shame in that. it’s rough. fun fact: even the US founding fathers got it wrong
later prints corrected this error which happens three times from Jefferson’s hand.
Go full weird with it and only use tis instead of it's. No confusion that way.
A Ukraine? Really? Why couldn't you use something practical like a university.
perhaps because russia initiated a ukranian invasion on february 24 2022.
How about the the?
Why not then end? Instead of the /dee/ end?
We'd say "a history student" in the UK, and the h isn't silent.
“British” isn't an accent. Like yeah some accents might use an, e.g “‘e’s an ‘istory student, innit?”, however many accents would pronounce the “h” and use “a”. You managed to be correct and incorrect at the same time
That's his exact point though. It depends on the sound when you say it, not the actual letter.
Let me try : "an Apple", "an nice Apple" ... not sure about the second one ...
Yes, because it starts with a consonant :)
Oh, here I see the problem, the N isn't supposed to be there! It's supposed to be "A nice napple!"
I'm pretty sure they're talking an ice apple.
n is a consonant ;)
Y is a consonant ? what ?
Y can act as a consonant or a vowel, depending on the position in the word.
Definitely a vowel: Baby
Part of a vowel sound: Play
Not a vowel at all: Yes, lawyer
When a Y starts a syllable, it typically doesn't take a vowel sound, closer to a "soft j" sound.
a soft J ? in english ? this is the first time I hear of this, are you sure ?
Yeezus/Jesus Yawn/Jawn Yoke/Joke
I don't know phonetics (or whatever the right term is for "mouth noises for speaking" is) enough to say if y- consonant/soft-j is the closest pairing. As I sit here like a weirdo going "yo-yo-yo" and "jo-jo-jo", they have a similar starting position, but soft-j definitely has that "ch". I think maybe it's closer to an r, like you/rue.
English is definitely nuts, but can you give an example of where this particular rule doesn't apply?
All of the examples relate to differences in pronunciation, so the guidance in the OP is good - use your personal pronunciation. I would imagine this would be harder for non-native speakers, but fortunately there aren't many words (that I'm aware of) that are commonly pronounced with a leading vowel sound or leading consonant sound depending of dialect.
The only example cited in this thread that most people will experience is "herb" which has large populations that pronounce it with and without a silent "h." "History" and related words are not commonly pronounced with a silent h outside of regional dialects.
Ubisoft needs to hear this.
It hurts my soul everytime I start up Farcry 5 and see "A Ubisoft Game" and not "An Ubisoft Game" on the intro splash screens.
Unless they pronounce it something other than You-Bee-Soft or Ooo-bee-soft. In which case, that would hurt my soul even more.
I've only ever heard it pronounced "You-Bee-Soft" and the "yuh" sound that starts with functions as a consonant. You wouldn't say "An youtube video."
You wouldn't download an car
The phrase "an car" was used by Wade of Dankpods/Garbage Time, I think to describe a 90's Toyota Corolla. "It's An Car" to mean it does the job of a self-propelled box on wheels with seats in it. And I've taken to use that to describe bog standard tools, like my completely unremarkable Wen drill press is An Drill Press.
That's great I love it. I do the opposite, I like to give banal items overly technical names. Chair=orthogonal spinal support unit. Hammer=non-calibrated adjustment appliance, etc.
OP explains in the description why it starts with A ans not An.
I don't know what the official pronunciation is, but I always read it as Ooo-bee-soft.
I always heard it as if it was an insult. Like they hated their customers.
YOU BE SOFT, BIIIITCH.
in french afaik it is pronounced like a french u, or a german ü
This is how I’ve always read it, which would make “A You-Bee-Soft Game” correct
YSK: don't use an. it adds nothing to the language. except maybe to provide a enallage
It smooths out the pronunciation when reading out loud.
Here's some examples.
A farmer fed a animal and got a egg.
A farmer fed an animal and got an egg.
The woman put on a orange hat.
The woman put on an orange hat.
The duck quacked at a cat
The duck quacked at an cat.
The "a orange" could work if you produced a "uh" instead of "eh". But I think an is the smoothest. "an cat" is just a fun incorrect use of an.
More simply:
Farmer fed animal and got egg. Woman put on orange hat. Duck quacked at cat.
A has an important role in language, its more than just filler. I am not an English expert, but I can look up some grammar to refresh myself a bit.
Which animal, how many eggs, what cat, what hat?
"The" has the opposite role.
There is a cat at the pond. The duck quacked at the cat.
In the first sentence, I introduced the existence of a cat. In the second sentence I referred specifically to the cat.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indefinite%20article
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a#dictionary-entry-2
Why use more word when few do trick?
what the fuck's a nanimal
The female grandparent of an animal.
Typo, they obviously meant to put manimal
Fun show!
YSK: don’t listen to this guy. He adds nothing to the language. Except maybe to provide scornful entertainment.
Also OP, learn to capitalize and punctuate before giving your opinion on language usage.
no. capitalization is another obvious flaw in the english language.