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It’s definitely about vowel sounds, because we don’t say “a hour” or “a herb”.
by maxton 6y ago
It’s definitely about vowel sounds, because we don’t say “a hour” or “a herb”.
- the_pwner224 6y agodeleted; i misread the parent comment
- DavidVoid 6y ago"hour" starts with an 'o'-sound, since the 'h' is (mostly) silent, so "an hour" is correct.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- beojan 6y ago> a herb I do, but that's because I pronounce the 'h' in 'herb'.
- DonaldFisk 6y ago> It’s definitely about vowel sounds Exactly, and Nvidia begins with an e sound. And we say "a union" because it begins with a y sound and not because it begins with the letter u. In the UK, people do say "a herb", but that's because we pronounce the h: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/herb#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/herb#Pronunciation
- np_tedious 6y agoAn historic day!
- IshKebab 6y agoThat's just weird over-correction. "A historic day" is correct but for some reason people heard "An historic day" and the idea spread that it was a special exception. Kind of like how you see lots of people on Reddit saying "water isn't wet, it just makes other things wet". They heard someone else say it and it sounds smart so they repeat it, without spending 10 seconds to look it up in a dictionary.
- teruakohatu 6y agoI an struggling to understand what is wrong with the phrase "water isn't wet, it just makes other things wet". Can you explain?
- IshKebab 6y agoWater is wet. There's nothing wrong with it grammatically. I just meant it was an example of people blindly copying untrue but smart-sounding facts.
- kwk1 6y agoTo me it may be a tell for the writers at one point pronouncing it as "'istoric", similar to those who say human as "'uman", and then as you said likely fanning out as an over-correction, possibly because that dialect was associated with prestige.
- IshKebab 6y agoYes maybe once upon a time but it doesn't explain why people say "an historic" today.
- sangnoir 6y ago"we" being Americans: the rest of the English-speaking world says "a herb" as the "h" in "herb" is not silent
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]