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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

I am not a native English speaker, but the way I learned it is that "an" is used if applied to a word that starts with a wovel. Is it not so?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/a-a...

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It’s to do with the sound, not the letter. “User” is typically pronounced “yoozer”, with a leading consonant sound, so it’s “a user”.

There are all kinds of cases where this reveals interesting things about how someone pronounces things.

An American will speak of “an herb” because the h is still silent there (“an ’erb”), whereas an Australian (and most other English dialects) will speak of “a herb” because it’s no longer silent.

In the KJV, 1 Kings 10:29 gets two in one verse, speaking of “an horse for an hundred and fifty”, showing that in the English of the early 1600s, you had “an ’orse” and “an ’undred” by pronunciation, whereas all major dialects now sound the h. (For reading aloud, I personally say “a horse for a hundred and fifty”, having decided that a/an are the same word just with context-dependent spelling and pronunciation, like “the” has two context-dependent pronunciations (“thuh dog” versus “thee elephant”, likewise based on the next syllable’s sound), though they’re both spelled the same way.)

If a Rust developer writes “an &str”, they’re probably pronouncing it “an ampersand str” or “an and str”, but if they write “a &str”, they might be pronouncing it “a str slice” or “a reference to a str”.

Exactly this. It's "a user". For the same reason it would be "an honest mistake" and not "a honest mistake".

> showing that in the English of the early 1600s, you had “an ’orse” and “an ’undred” by pronunciation, whereas all major dialects now sound the h.

I don't know what I'd call (or you're calling) 'major dialects' (just RP & GenAm?) but quite large geographic chunks of England would say "an 'orse for a 'undred", in the early 2000s.

(And 'a undred' is not a typo. I don't know why that's different, but 'an undred' just sounds wrong to me.)

I thought it was down to a few rather small regions left in the UK (and fading), but I’m not expert in their accents. I could well be wrong, and my word choice was injudicious.

I should also note that Indian English is also a bit patchy, their leading aitches are regularly silent due to it not being a common construct in their own languages; but they’re also less precise about a/an in general too.

As an American, I’m fascinated by your precise description of accents. We have plenty of our own, but we don’t categorize them that precisely. For example, I can usually distinguish between West Texas and North Carolina, but I probably couldn’t explain the difference.

I think they can be just as readily, not that I mean to tell you your own interests of course but if one is interested in accents/linguistics/usage etc. then the patterns are perhaps more noticeable.

I'm British, so I'm not that familiar with many American accents, certainly not your examples, but off the top of my head you do find elongated vowels, t->d, ay->i (short), rhotic r, nasalisation, 'vocal fry', 'baby voice', and ending every sentence or half sentence with rising intonation like it's a question?

Oh it's certainly fading. And I suppose I should have qualified that I meant the 'traditionally associated dialect & accent' of large geographic chunks - which isn't to say that the majority of the population there actually speaks it. But the accent of the guys propping up the bar of the locals' pub across large geographic chunks, I think. I'm no expert either.

But (because English is never simple) you also get people who will intentionally follow the rule based on a pronunciation they don't use, because "it's the rule".

https://grammarist.com/usage/an-historic/

>whereas all major dialects now sound the h

Yorkshire doesn't pronounce the aitches.

Yes, but it's based on the word's pronunciation starting with a vowel sound, not the word's spelling starting with a vowel letter. In the word "user", the 'u' is normally pronounced as 'yu', which starts with a consonant; therefore the correct phrase is "a user", not "an user". Contrary to ReactiveJelly's speculation, this is true in both American and British dialects. Perhaps there is some other dialect where it isn't.

Interestingly enough, also y is a vowel in many languages. This is not a surprising mistake to make if you are not a native speaker.

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