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OFF-TOPIC FOR ENGLISH-AS-SECOND-LANGUAGE: For HN'ers who are still learning the finer points of English this title shows one of the many weird inconsistencies

by sambeau 12y ago

OFF-TOPIC FOR ENGLISH-AS-SECOND-LANGUAGE: For HN'ers who are still learning the finer points of English this title shows one of the many weird inconsistencies of the language. Normally, when trying to say 'a thing' where the thing starts with a vowel we change the 'a' into 'an' so 'a axe' becomes 'an axe', 'a umbrella' becomes 'an umbrella'. However this is a notable exception: when pronouncing 'user' there is an unwritten 'y' e.g. it is said 'yoozer', thus we wouldn't normally add another consonant here so it should be 'a user' not 'an user'. If you say it out loud you can hear it (and hopefully feel the extra tongue work that, traditionally, we try to avoid). Another common exception is 'Hotel'. It takes 'an' rather than the expected 'a' as for some reason we drop the 'H'. For me it rolls better off the tongue with 'an' but this may purely be due to conditioning. 'Herb' is a difficult one as in the US it's pronounced 'erb' while in the UK it has a hard 'H'. Thus in the UK we use 'A herb' — I assume the US says 'an Herb' — correct me if I'm wrong. It's nonsense like this that makes me pity you brave fellows who attempt to master our pidgin of a language! Edit: change 'pigeon' to 'pidgin' :)

krallja 12y ago
> an herb Yep.
bullsbarry 12y ago
I wouldn't be so sure about the 'an' before hotel. That may be regional as well. I'm from the southern US and use 'a' there. However, 'an' would be used whenever the 'h' isn't voiced, which in my case would be words like honorable and honest.
madeofpalk 12y ago
> Another common exception is 'Hotel'. It takes 'an' rather than the expected 'a' as for some reason we drop the 'H'. For me it rolls better off the tongue with 'an' but this may purely be due to conditioning. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in Australia I don't think I've ever heard 'an hotel'. It's always 'I'm going to a hotel' Saying 'an Hotel' makes me pronounce 'Hotel' in a very uncomfortable way.
- sambeau 12y ago
  Interesting. As I said - my view is from the UK - I should have put 'often' or 'sometimes' before it (although I was taught 'an hotel' at school).
  - twic 12y ago
    As a southern Englishman, i would say, and expect to hear, "a hotel". I associate "an hotel" with Northerners, Cockneys and speakers of Estuary English, and perhaps also posh people (although maybe that's Northerners or Cockneys trying to be posh, in the mode of Hyacinth Bucket).
    - dspillett 12y ago
      "an hotel" is just wrong in my experience, which I think is where "people trying to sound posh" comes into it. The south and the "posh" (there is quite some overlap there as there is a perception that the south is more posh and the north more rough) use "a hotel" which is also technically correct, as you move north the "h" gets dropped so "an" becomes correct, though if you are writing that you should have a apostrophe to indicate the dropped letter (an 'otel) - in fact the 'postrophe is sometimes even pronounced by way of a very small pause (this is often a clue when decided if someone has a particular accent or is just imitating it).
    - sambeau 12y ago
      I was taught 'an hotel' in Scotland by a very old-fashioned teacher. She could, of course, have just been plain wrong and I've been carrying this with me for decades repeating the mistake. Checking the UK newspaper style guides they seem to all insist on 'a hotel'.
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  Yeah, this is a mostly American hyper correction. You see the same thing with "an herb". I'm guessing it's a relic from people who spoke French affecting the same pronunciation in English. You occasionally even see "an history"
chengsun 12y ago
Good point, but I believe you mean "pidgin of a language"!
- sambeau 12y ago
  Indeed I do. Bloomin' autocorrect changed all sorts of words I missed that one :)
JshWright 12y ago
You're spot on about how we say "an herb" in the US. Interestingly, it seems "hotel" is the exact opposite... I've never heard someone in the US drop the "h" . We say "a hotel". EDIT: Wow, five overlapping replies in two minutes, all correcting the "hotel" thing... Just goes to prove the aphorism that the best way to get help on the internet is to post an incorrect answer (perhaps Cloudflare should have tried that...)
- louthy 12y ago
  In the UK we say "a herb" and pronounce the H.
  - sspiff 12y ago
    Don't you also pronounce the "h" in hotel? I always say (and write) "a hotel" instead of "an otel".
    - louthy 12y ago
      Depends what part of the UK you're in, where I grew up the H would be dropped. But yes, the proper English pronunciation would be "a hotel".
      - sspiff 12y ago
        Thanks. English is not my first language and I never heard it with the H dropped before, so I was afraid I was just chronically exposed to an error and copied it.
  - JshWright 12y ago
    Right, and occurring to the GP, you _don't_ pronounce the H in Hotel. The exact opposite is true in the US.
    - gknoy 12y ago
      The neat thing is (to me), his rule still makes sense. If I were listening to someone who spoke a dialect of English different than mine, it would still sound natural if they chose their "a" vs "an" in the "right" way: # yes a hotel an 'otel # no an hotel a 'otel
xiaq 12y ago
This is not actually an inconsistency. "an" is used when the next word starts with a vowel phonetically, not when orthographically.
gil 12y ago
English is not my first language but I believe your "show's" should be "shows". Sorry for being pedantic but since we are on topic I thought it would be relevant to bring it up.
- sambeau 12y ago
  Fair enough! As you can see from the rest of this conversation (and the way my points for the article has swung violently from -1 to +6 and and is falling back again) I'm clearly no expert despite having been born to it! :)
dspillett 12y ago
I (northern UK based) find "an user" feels wrong as to me the "y" implied by the way "u" is pronounced is a consonant sound so it should be "a user" - though I pronounce the "a" in a softish manner (more towards "ey"), it might be different if you pronounce "a" harder or pronounce the "u" as more towards "oo" (reducing the y-like mouth movements). Regarding herb: in written word it is "a herb" for correctness, though few in the north pronounce it exactly that way as the "h" is dropped to produce "an 'erb" or sometimes (though this makes you sound uneducated due to certain stereotypes) more like "a nerb" (this time with the harder "a" as in "an". It's nonsense like this that makes me pity you brave fellows who attempt to master our pidgin of a language! The fairly arbitrary set of incompatible rules and standards that make up the English language mean it is difficult to learn perfectly (especially as there are arguments as to that "perfectly" means in this context) but it makes the language easy to learn to the point where you can survive using it in the languages native land(s) easier than many others. We are so used to subconsciously processing all the different accents we have in the relatively small area that is the UK and the extra nuances that creep in from elsewhere (poor education, influences from other cultures mainly via TV/film & music, etc.), that unless we are feeling pedantic we also naturally screen out the mistakes non-native speakers make. It is common to respond to people apologising for their bad English with something along the lines of "don't worry, I deal with worse from people who have been here for generations". We are not being patronising here (well, at least some of us aren't!): sometimes we genuinely do have to internally correct/translate more when talking to someone from 300 miles away than we do when talking to a Pole/Spaniard/what-ever who is not (yet) particularly fluent in English.
- vidarh 12y ago
  For "hotel" and some others, I believe the difference is whether or not the "h" is aspirated. That is, whether or not you take a short break at the word boundary. If you say it "in one breath", you get "an-(h)otel" with a very soft h and no or very little aspiration. If you make the word boundary more pronounced, you get "a hotel" with a clearly noticeable air-burst, and a clearly distinct "h". Same process as with "herb" etc. and some other words that can be pronounced both with and without aspiration in English. This is much the same as in French, where if the preceding word end in a vowel (with certain exceptions) and the current word starts with a vowel sound, you can usually elide the last vowel in the preceding words except when the "h" is aspirated. My French teacher liked to say that the French "thinks" they are pronouncing the "h" in those few cases (aspiration usually refers to cases where there's a strong burst of air in pronouncing the sound, but in French "aspirated h" does not actually involve fully pronouncing an "h", though there may be some aspiration) (I may confuse this - this is based on recollection of my French classes 20 years ago...)
dm2 12y ago
It's a lot more simple than everyone is making it out to be. You base a/an on the sound of the first syllable rather than what the first letter is. An hour. An herb. A hotel. An HMO. An REI. A one-off. An MRI. An fMRI. An SEO. A DOE building. A user. All of these are for US English pronunciation.
- sambeau 12y ago
  UK newspapers all seem to agree on 'a hotel' but disagree on 'an historian'. http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-h http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-h http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435307/Telegraph-style-book-Aa.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/143530... http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a#node-21532141 http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a#node-21532141 I've generally used the Economist in my past writing and they say: An An should be used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an egg, an umbrella, an MP) or an h if, and only if, the h is silent (an honorary degree). But a European, a university, a U-turn, a hospital, a hotel. Historical is an exception: it is preceded by an, the h remaining silent. Which begs the question — what was my victorian-style, Scottish primary school teacher on about when she insisted on 'an hotel'?
  - dm2 12y ago
    Teachers can be wrong, but maybe some words are pronounced differently with a Scottish accent. And the "or an h..." part is redundant because "honorary" starts with the sound "on". I've never heard "historical" pronounced with a silent "h" though.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Pronunciation is highly regional, an if you pronounce "hotel" without voicing/aspirating the "h", then "an" is appropriate. When newspapers use style-guides, they are after consistence as well as "emulate" a certain spoken voice consistent with their profile and target demographics.
  - KMag 12y ago
    It certainly raises a question, but how is this circular reasoning?[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Svip 12y ago
Speaking of which, is it appropriate to us 'an' in front of 'hysterically'? Yes I do, because YOU are such an hysterically funny person. Did you notice how I used "an" there properly? ~ Josh Lyman, The West Wing
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  That would depend on how you pronounce "hysterically". Do you voice the "h" or not? If you pronounce it "iss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "an". If you pronounce it "hiss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "a". Personally I've never heard the word pronounced with a silent "h". I checked several dictionaries and they all list the word with voiced "h". None of them even list the silent "h" as an alternate pronunciation. Therefore I would say that the voiced "h" is the correct pronunciation, and "an hysterically funny person" is wrong. Given the "did you see" comment, it's a good example of a hypercorrection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
wil421 12y ago
A unicorn. A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier. A one time thing. English is a pain even for non ESL and that's especially true in the South!
- pessimizer 12y ago
  A wun time thing.
baby 12y ago
I feel bad upvoting you when you're hijacking the thread's potential relevant comments. But I really need comments like yours and you're awesome! I learned two things I didn't know thanks to you.
yareally 12y ago
I never heard of anyone in the US using "an herb" and I've lived my entire life there. Also never heard the 'h' not being pronounced. I mostly lived in the East/Midwest, so perhaps the pronunciation differs elsewhere by region.
- jffry 12y ago
  I grew up in the American South and always heard "herbs" pronounced without the H, and correspondingly "an herb" was used.
army 12y ago
I'm a native English speaker and I can guarantee you that I'd never knowingly say or write "an hotel".
dang 12y ago
This off-topic digression was made possible by the submitter's rewritten title: "PowerDNS on losing Cloudflare as an user". Since the article's title is neither linkbait nor misleading, we reverted to it, or rather to a shortened version of it that fits the 80 char limit. I'm also demoting this subthread as obviously off-topic. It makes little sense for a bikeshed discussion like this to occupy the top slot of the top discussion on HN, but these things get reliably upvoted.
- sambeau 12y ago
  My apologies.
  - dang 12y ago
    No need! It was a fine digression in and of itself, and I share your desire to help with the subtleties of English. The trouble comes with the upvotes that make the digression into a top subthread. Bikeshedding is a collective creation that no one particularly intends. It feels to me like there's a simple and elegant solution to this problem waiting to be discovered.
    - sambeau 12y ago
      Originally it was a reaction to the in-built desire I (and I suspect most of us) have to immediately jump in and make a correction to someone else's English. It was an experiment in trying to say something useful and positive instead. It was an interesting result. I'm not sure I'd repeat it.
      - dang 12y ago
        I've done the exact same thing and come to the same conclusion. In any case, your good intentions were clear.
AaronIG 12y ago
Easiest way to remember, if the sound of the word's first letter starts with a consonant sound, you use a. If it starts with a vowel sound, you use an.

by sambeau 12y ago

krallja 12y ago

> an herb Yep.

bullsbarry 12y ago

I wouldn't be so sure about the 'an' before hotel. That may be regional as well. I'm from the southern US and use 'a' there. However, 'an' would be used whenever the 'h' isn't voiced, which in my case would be words like honorable and honest.

madeofpalk 12y ago

> Another common exception is 'Hotel'. It takes 'an' rather than the expected 'a' as for some reason we drop the 'H'. For me it rolls better off the tongue with 'an' but this may purely be due to conditioning. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in Australia I don't think I've ever heard 'an hotel'. It's always 'I'm going to a hotel' Saying 'an Hotel' makes me pronounce 'Hotel' in a very uncomfortable way.

sambeau 12y ago
Interesting. As I said - my view is from the UK - I should have put 'often' or 'sometimes' before it (although I was taught 'an hotel' at school).
- twic 12y ago
  As a southern Englishman, i would say, and expect to hear, "a hotel". I associate "an hotel" with Northerners, Cockneys and speakers of Estuary English, and perhaps also posh people (although maybe that's Northerners or Cockneys trying to be posh, in the mode of Hyacinth Bucket).
  - dspillett 12y ago
    "an hotel" is just wrong in my experience, which I think is where "people trying to sound posh" comes into it. The south and the "posh" (there is quite some overlap there as there is a perception that the south is more posh and the north more rough) use "a hotel" which is also technically correct, as you move north the "h" gets dropped so "an" becomes correct, though if you are writing that you should have a apostrophe to indicate the dropped letter (an 'otel) - in fact the 'postrophe is sometimes even pronounced by way of a very small pause (this is often a clue when decided if someone has a particular accent or is just imitating it).
  - sambeau 12y ago
    I was taught 'an hotel' in Scotland by a very old-fashioned teacher. She could, of course, have just been plain wrong and I've been carrying this with me for decades repeating the mistake. Checking the UK newspaper style guides they seem to all insist on 'a hotel'.
barry-cotter 12y ago
Yeah, this is a mostly American hyper correction. You see the same thing with "an herb". I'm guessing it's a relic from people who spoke French affecting the same pronunciation in English. You occasionally even see "an history"

chengsun 12y ago

Good point, but I believe you mean "pidgin of a language"!

sambeau 12y ago
Indeed I do. Bloomin' autocorrect changed all sorts of words I missed that one :)

JshWright 12y ago

You're spot on about how we say "an herb" in the US. Interestingly, it seems "hotel" is the exact opposite... I've never heard someone in the US drop the "h" . We say "a hotel". EDIT: Wow, five overlapping replies in two minutes, all correcting the "hotel" thing... Just goes to prove the aphorism that the best way to get help on the internet is to post an incorrect answer (perhaps Cloudflare should have tried that...)

louthy 12y ago
In the UK we say "a herb" and pronounce the H.
- sspiff 12y ago
  Don't you also pronounce the "h" in hotel? I always say (and write) "a hotel" instead of "an otel".
  - louthy 12y ago
    Depends what part of the UK you're in, where I grew up the H would be dropped. But yes, the proper English pronunciation would be "a hotel".
    - sspiff 12y ago
      Thanks. English is not my first language and I never heard it with the H dropped before, so I was afraid I was just chronically exposed to an error and copied it.
- JshWright 12y ago
  Right, and occurring to the GP, you _don't_ pronounce the H in Hotel. The exact opposite is true in the US.
  - gknoy 12y ago
    The neat thing is (to me), his rule still makes sense. If I were listening to someone who spoke a dialect of English different than mine, it would still sound natural if they chose their "a" vs "an" in the "right" way: # yes a hotel an 'otel # no an hotel a 'otel

xiaq 12y ago

This is not actually an inconsistency. "an" is used when the next word starts with a vowel phonetically, not when orthographically.

gil 12y ago

English is not my first language but I believe your "show's" should be "shows". Sorry for being pedantic but since we are on topic I thought it would be relevant to bring it up.

sambeau 12y ago
Fair enough! As you can see from the rest of this conversation (and the way my points for the article has swung violently from -1 to +6 and and is falling back again) I'm clearly no expert despite having been born to it! :)

dspillett 12y ago

I (northern UK based) find "an user" feels wrong as to me the "y" implied by the way "u" is pronounced is a consonant sound so it should be "a user" - though I pronounce the "a" in a softish manner (more towards "ey"), it might be different if you pronounce "a" harder or pronounce the "u" as more towards "oo" (reducing the y-like mouth movements). Regarding herb: in written word it is "a herb" for correctness, though few in the north pronounce it exactly that way as the "h" is dropped to produce "an 'erb" or sometimes (though this makes you sound uneducated due to certain stereotypes) more like "a nerb" (this time with the harder "a" as in "an". It's nonsense like this that makes me pity you brave fellows who attempt to master our pidgin of a language! The fairly arbitrary set of incompatible rules and standards that make up the English language mean it is difficult to learn perfectly (especially as there are arguments as to that "perfectly" means in this context) but it makes the language easy to learn to the point where you can survive using it in the languages native land(s) easier than many others. We are so used to subconsciously processing all the different accents we have in the relatively small area that is the UK and the extra nuances that creep in from elsewhere (poor education, influences from other cultures mainly via TV/film & music, etc.), that unless we are feeling pedantic we also naturally screen out the mistakes non-native speakers make. It is common to respond to people apologising for their bad English with something along the lines of "don't worry, I deal with worse from people who have been here for generations". We are not being patronising here (well, at least some of us aren't!): sometimes we genuinely do have to internally correct/translate more when talking to someone from 300 miles away than we do when talking to a Pole/Spaniard/what-ever who is not (yet) particularly fluent in English.

vidarh 12y ago
For "hotel" and some others, I believe the difference is whether or not the "h" is aspirated. That is, whether or not you take a short break at the word boundary. If you say it "in one breath", you get "an-(h)otel" with a very soft h and no or very little aspiration. If you make the word boundary more pronounced, you get "a hotel" with a clearly noticeable air-burst, and a clearly distinct "h". Same process as with "herb" etc. and some other words that can be pronounced both with and without aspiration in English. This is much the same as in French, where if the preceding word end in a vowel (with certain exceptions) and the current word starts with a vowel sound, you can usually elide the last vowel in the preceding words except when the "h" is aspirated. My French teacher liked to say that the French "thinks" they are pronouncing the "h" in those few cases (aspiration usually refers to cases where there's a strong burst of air in pronouncing the sound, but in French "aspirated h" does not actually involve fully pronouncing an "h", though there may be some aspiration) (I may confuse this - this is based on recollection of my French classes 20 years ago...)

dm2 12y ago

It's a lot more simple than everyone is making it out to be. You base a/an on the sound of the first syllable rather than what the first letter is. An hour. An herb. A hotel. An HMO. An REI. A one-off. An MRI. An fMRI. An SEO. A DOE building. A user. All of these are for US English pronunciation.

sambeau 12y ago
UK newspapers all seem to agree on 'a hotel' but disagree on 'an historian'. http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-h http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-h http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435307/Telegraph-style-book-Aa.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/143530... http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a#node-21532141 http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a#node-21532141 I've generally used the Economist in my past writing and they say: An An should be used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an egg, an umbrella, an MP) or an h if, and only if, the h is silent (an honorary degree). But a European, a university, a U-turn, a hospital, a hotel. Historical is an exception: it is preceded by an, the h remaining silent. Which begs the question — what was my victorian-style, Scottish primary school teacher on about when she insisted on 'an hotel'?
- dm2 12y ago
  Teachers can be wrong, but maybe some words are pronounced differently with a Scottish accent. And the "or an h..." part is redundant because "honorary" starts with the sound "on". I've never heard "historical" pronounced with a silent "h" though.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Pronunciation is highly regional, an if you pronounce "hotel" without voicing/aspirating the "h", then "an" is appropriate. When newspapers use style-guides, they are after consistence as well as "emulate" a certain spoken voice consistent with their profile and target demographics.
- KMag 12y ago
  It certainly raises a question, but how is this circular reasoning?[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Svip 12y ago

Speaking of which, is it appropriate to us 'an' in front of 'hysterically'? Yes I do, because YOU are such an hysterically funny person. Did you notice how I used "an" there properly? ~ Josh Lyman, The West Wing

Stratoscope 12y ago
That would depend on how you pronounce "hysterically". Do you voice the "h" or not? If you pronounce it "iss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "an". If you pronounce it "hiss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "a". Personally I've never heard the word pronounced with a silent "h". I checked several dictionaries and they all list the word with voiced "h". None of them even list the silent "h" as an alternate pronunciation. Therefore I would say that the voiced "h" is the correct pronunciation, and "an hysterically funny person" is wrong. Given the "did you see" comment, it's a good example of a hypercorrection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

wil421 12y ago

A unicorn. A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier. A one time thing. English is a pain even for non ESL and that's especially true in the South!

pessimizer 12y ago
A wun time thing.

baby 12y ago

I feel bad upvoting you when you're hijacking the thread's potential relevant comments. But I really need comments like yours and you're awesome! I learned two things I didn't know thanks to you.

yareally 12y ago

I never heard of anyone in the US using "an herb" and I've lived my entire life there. Also never heard the 'h' not being pronounced. I mostly lived in the East/Midwest, so perhaps the pronunciation differs elsewhere by region.

jffry 12y ago
I grew up in the American South and always heard "herbs" pronounced without the H, and correspondingly "an herb" was used.

army 12y ago

I'm a native English speaker and I can guarantee you that I'd never knowingly say or write "an hotel".

dang 12y ago

This off-topic digression was made possible by the submitter's rewritten title: "PowerDNS on losing Cloudflare as an user". Since the article's title is neither linkbait nor misleading, we reverted to it, or rather to a shortened version of it that fits the 80 char limit. I'm also demoting this subthread as obviously off-topic. It makes little sense for a bikeshed discussion like this to occupy the top slot of the top discussion on HN, but these things get reliably upvoted.

sambeau 12y ago
My apologies.
- dang 12y ago
  No need! It was a fine digression in and of itself, and I share your desire to help with the subtleties of English. The trouble comes with the upvotes that make the digression into a top subthread. Bikeshedding is a collective creation that no one particularly intends. It feels to me like there's a simple and elegant solution to this problem waiting to be discovered.
  - sambeau 12y ago
    Originally it was a reaction to the in-built desire I (and I suspect most of us) have to immediately jump in and make a correction to someone else's English. It was an experiment in trying to say something useful and positive instead. It was an interesting result. I'm not sure I'd repeat it.
    - dang 12y ago
      I've done the exact same thing and come to the same conclusion. In any case, your good intentions were clear.

AaronIG 12y ago

Easiest way to remember, if the sound of the word's first letter starts with a consonant sound, you use a. If it starts with a vowel sound, you use an.