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OK, so I'm watching the History channel and they have an announcement before the beginning of the show, something about UFO's.

"This is an historical ...."


AN historical?

A historical.

Surely it's A, right?
 
In that case, yes, because the "h" is not silent. If the "h" is silent, that creates a vowel aound at the start of the word, necessitating the "an" before it.

If it sounded line "an istorical" then they got the rule right but mispronounced the word, thus the "oh shit."

...and we all know an "oh shit" erases two "atta-boys."
 
Inkara1 said:
Do you pronounce the "h" in "historical"?
Click to expand...
Not as much as I would in Hummer or hummingbird.
Actually...now that I think about it... putting 'an' in front of historical makes me want to turn the 'h' silent.
The 'n' in an kinda stretches out to fill the void left by the silent 'h'.
 
ok, that bugged me for a long time, now I have another, which one is correct:

1. a R.
2. an R.

???
 
So when referring to letters as in "the RIAA", I should say "an RIAA" (hypothetical).

so the whole alphabet is:
an A, a B, a C, a D, an E, an F, a G, an H, an I, a J, a K, an L, an M, an N, an O, a P, a Q, an R, an S, a T, an U (sounds weird), a V, a W, an X, a Y, a Z.

correct?
 
And an Æ, an Ø and an Å. :p

I would say "a U" though. The first sound isn't a wovel sound. (In phonetics it would be /ju:/)
 
It's "a U."

Think of it this way: the vowels are A E I O U and sometimes Y. When the Y is at the beginning of the word, in English anyway, it takes a consonant sound and therefore needs the a instead of the an.

So it's a U, or a ewe (which sounds exactly the same as a you). Same way as you'd say a yak, a yo-yo, etc.

As for historical, I always say the h at the beginning because it's branched off the word "history" which is always said with the h pronounced.
 
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