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).

Reference

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  • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    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

    • CyberTourist@infosec.pub
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      5 hours ago

      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.

    • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      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”.