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An historic | ||
Tags: Morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 11 16 October 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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The front-page news in today's "Times" newspaper has a strapline "An historic agreement"
I've never agreed with placing the article "an" before the word historic. It doesn't sound right either. An hour, an honour, these are correct because the letter h is not aspirated and effectively has a vowel sound. But unless you are a cockney, you don't pronounce historic as 'istoric. And you certainly never say an horse. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 11 16 October 2012 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I suspect it has to do with the etymology of the word "horse", but that's just a guess. In any case, I grew up with "an historic" instead of "a historic", even though the latter may be more common now. The Times article tagline may just be trying to set a certain register. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4931 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 3 of 11 16 October 2012 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Typically I hear the rule as "a" becomes "an" when followed by a "vowel sound", and the
way I was raised (even if I didn't get told the rule) I never heard "an historic", but I would guess that could vary idiomatically. Kind of a tricky rule, really. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5601 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 4 of 11 17 October 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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This is an established usage:
"historic: sometimes without h when after the indefinite article. Preference poll BrE: with h: 94%; without h: 6%:" (Pronunciation Dictionary J.C. Wells) Read a full discussion here. Edited by Cabaire on 17 October 2012 at 12:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5053 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 5 of 11 17 October 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
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One of my English teachers once said that saying "an historic" is pretentious...
Kind of off-topic: I wonder, do people write "an herb" in the US and "a herb" is Britain? Or is there an established written standard for this? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5068 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 6 of 11 17 October 2012 at 5:20am | IP Logged | ||
In the US, /erb/ is largely the standard and dominant pronunciation while in Britain /herb/ is, or so it is commonly said to be true. Pronouncing the word as /herb/ in the US, unless you speak a British (or any non-American) dialect, sounds pretentious, at least to me. Edit: So at least in the US, you would write "an herb", I'm not sure about in Britain. Edited by Kartof on 17 October 2012 at 5:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 11 17 October 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since the only rule about a/an I've ever heard of is the aforementioned one about pronunciation (a adds 'n' in front of vowel sounds), I'd conclude whoever is responsible for that headline actually says /isto:rik/, or [s]he's been told what to write...
Personally, I think I'd normally say 'a historic', but I must confess when I saw that line I mentally read it as /isto:rik/ -- but I just like to think people who write in public know their stuff :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 8 of 11 17 October 2012 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I pronounce the h in "historic" and "herb", but my personal idiolect is based on that of
the UK (and if I did have to switch to North American, you'd hear the Canadian in my accent anyways). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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