Originally Posted by Hamwich
Originally Posted by GrumpyPa
Which convention? ‘An hotel’ has largely been superseded by ‘a hotel’, but I would say "a history book" but "an historic event."
Guess it’s your choice. 😊


I thought the 'an' business was because we used to pronounce hotel without an aspirated H, more like the French pronunciation?

I don't believe it was ever a convention to use an before a naturally aspirated h was it? We would never say things like "I'd like to buy an Harp", or "Here comes an horde of Vikings" but you're right, there does seem to be a common exception in the specific case of an historic event.


You use the article "a" before words that start with a consonant sound and "an" before words that start with a vowel sound. For example, He has a unique point of view on the subject and talked about it for an hour. The "u" in "unique" makes the "Y" sound—a consonant sound—therefore you use "a" as your article, while the "h" in "hour" sounds like it starts with "ow"—a vowel sound.


I don't know how that sits with regional accents as "Here comes a horde of Vikings" could well be pronounced " 'ere comes an 'orde of Vikings"