YSK: Use ‘a’ when the word starts with a consonant sound, and ‘an’ when it starts with a vowel sound
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).
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Cockney i'nn'it guv'na.