h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i came to thinking about this, a hour sounds wrong but in english there is an, an before vouls (aeiou) and and, a before the rest.

so why this exception?

Is it because the 'h' in hour is prounced as a kind of 'a' type sound? or do I mean a kind of 'e' sound

Hour is pronounced as our because the h is a silent one therefore the use of an in front of it is appropriate.Same goes for the word honour.

Incog.

grammatically the vast majority of words beginning with "h" should be preceeded with "an":

e.g. : an hotel is correct but rarely used, an hour is correct

There is also "an helicopter" but that just sounds silly....

Its a hotel and a helicopter. post 3 is correct.

yeah, an should be used before all h words even though it sounds a bit daft.

an hilarious sketch sounds alright though.

Actually, both 'an hotel' and 'a hotel' are acceptable usage. You regularly hear 'an historic occasion'. It might not be strictly correct, but then, we're not French.

Both the French and English languages have 2 types of h-words - ones that are aspirated and ones that arent.

So in English , hour, honest, honorary all take "an" rather that "a" because the h isnt pronounced.

In French the equivalent is whether or not the word gets an l' or a le/la

le herrison
l'heure

an horange is perfectly acceptable too.

the an or a question is not so much to do with the actual consonant vowel question (h being the most obvious annoying one as it is sometimes but not always silent)

It is based on the sound of the word ie if saying 'a student veterinary nurse works hard' then 'a' is correct but if you abbreviate it to SVN it would be correct to write 'an SVN works very hard' As the S is pronounced 'ess'

So it is the pronunciation of the word that dictates the a or an not the spelling as such.



Mort

PS i only know that as i had to look it up the other day for a guide article ( askoxford.com )