this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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You Should Know

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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

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The vowel sound rule (or a related one) is also used for which vowel sound goes at the end of the definite article "the", that is, the sound the 'e' makes.

Usually the last vowel sound of "the" is a schwa, arguably the most common vowel sound in English, but before another vowel sound, it becomes "ee", or what other European languages might write "i".

There might even be an intrusive y (or j as used in Norse and Germanic languages) depending on the speaker. i.e. "The apple" may well be pronounced "thi(y)apple", and a fellow native speaker wouldn't notice. "The ball" has the usual schwa. As does "the usual schwa" for that matter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I had never heard this spelled out or identified the pattern myself, even though I’d noticed there were differences. Thank you for sharing! This answers questions I didn’t even know I had.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:

https://youtu.be/nCe7Fj8-ZnQ

TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of "a(n)", "the" and "to" for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 21 hours ago

just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds.

You may say 'dialect', I'll say 'failed student', potato, potato.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

That was fantastic and a must-view for this topic.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can't believe you would make such a simple and obvious mistake. The correct way to say it is "Trolling are a art", ffs.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm a native English speaker, not fluent in any other languages, and I still fuck up it's / its on a regular basis.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Also interesting, in Ukrainian, the U is pronounced "oo", so if we said it the way they did, it would be "an Ukraine".

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