(no subject)

[jgrafton]

This poll somewhat inspired by a recent post of brad's, mainly cause I thought my own results were somewhat odd.

Don't think about the answers too hard, just take whatever sounds most natural. (Say the options aloud, if you'd like.)

[Poll #1006482]


In unrelated news, I should stop leaving the office after the next day's xkcd comic is posted.

Comments

[kades905.livejournal.com]

It always used to bother me when the VOICE in Gauntlet: Dark Legacy would announce, "AN HEROIC EFFORT!" whenever you defeated an enormous swathe of baddies. I think that in American English, if there is such a thing, we have the habit of clearly pronouncing the "h." Also, I think the confusion that can come about from hearing "EAROIC" versus "HEROIC" is greater than any inconvenience that could arise from the a versus an.

It's an interesting question, though, I've thought about that myself. (And the LJ thing your friend mentioned, as well.) An LJ, a LiveJournal.

[jgrafton]

I realized after posting this poll that there were a number of other interesting options I could've possibly added.

For example, "an heroic effort" sounds very wrong to me, while "an historic event" sounds completely normal.

[daitryk.livejournal.com]

What paper was that in??

[jgrafton]

Houston Chronicle, it seems.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

The first two depend on if I'm pronouncing the h or not. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, and the "n" is sound-based rather than spelling based, I think.

[carmiendo.livejournal.com]

it is the rule that you use 'an' if it precedes a vowel SOUND and 'a' if it doesn't. so for these examples, since i would pronounce both h-es, i'd use 'a'.

source for the rule: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html
(though i don't know how credible it is, it was just the first reference that came up on google)

[jgrafton]

Yes, the point was more "how do you typically pronounce these things?"

[cimby.livejournal.com]

If I say the h like in historic, then I'd use a. If I don't, like in hour, I use an. We were actually just discussing that the other day with the Irish, who say all kinds of weird stuff.

[kartiksg.livejournal.com]

Goddamned Americans and their perverted language :-P

I always stress the 'h' for a word uniformly across all contexts. I never stress 'h' for honest. Always stress 'h' for historical or heroic -- and definitely for herb which I never heard unstressed (i.e. "erb") until I came here.

[newtypezaku.livejournal.com]

A poll with no tickybox? What madness is this?

[tmildorf.livejournal.com]

Ack! It's *h*istoric, not istoric, so requires "a." Unlike the battle of herbs-erbs, where I have seen both pronunciations in dictionaries, I have not encountered the silent-h version in a dictionary and regard it as wrong rather than variant. I wonder whether "istoric" is the product of laziness, such as when t's start sounding like d's in speech.

[jgrafton]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone aspirate the h in "herb," while something like "historic" seems much more reasonable to me.

Also, "hypothesis." (As pointed out by this site.)

[tmildorf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Have you asked any of your British friends as to their feelings about herbs? We seem to be of opposite opinions. Incidentally, my own googling puts the "a historic"/"an historic" contest at 2,050,000/1,640,000, much closer than the numbers cited at that webpage.

But OMG! An hypothesis?!? *cries*