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Comment by reb | Hacker News Reader

Meta: I'm familiar with "an historic", but I've never seen "an hypothesis" before. Is "an before h-" a broader grammatical pattern than I realized?

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Yes

>In English, the pronunciation of ⟨h⟩ as /h/ can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. That is, when the phoneme /h/ precedes a vowel, /h/ may be realized as a voiceless version of the subsequent vowel. For example the word ⟨hit⟩, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt]

For words beginning with h and where the first syllable is unstressed (historic, hypothesis, but not hitter, happy) it can be appropriate to use "an" rather than "a" as the associated indefinite article.

Anecdata point of one, but I voice the H on hypothesis. Im a native American English speaker, but from the northwest.

"Voiceless" in this context means you dont engage your larnyx/vocal cords (you don't create a pitch), not that you don't sound it out. Compare a whispered "ahhh" - voiceless - vs the "ahh" you say at the doctor - voiced.

Isn't this an american english vs british english thing? I was puzzled by "an historic" for a long time and then I heard a british person say it and it made sense. Because personally I pronounce the h in historic, hypothesis, hitter, and happy virtually identically.

Native American English speaker here (from northeast/mid-Atlantic, but living in NorCal for 20 years now), and I generally mostly drop the "h" in "historic", such that "an" sounds reasonable. Agree that dropping the "h" from the other words you mention would feel weird, though.

I’m in the PNW, so a fairly different accent. If I say “an historic” the h gets minimized, but “a historic” sounds perfectly natural to my ear and “an” sounds wrong with all the other example words.

Mid-Atlantic here. I'd say "a historic" with the harder 'h' sound.

"an historic" sounds to me like "anhistoric" (as in "lacking history" kind of like "amoral")

The word is "ahistoric," and ask yourself why you thought it was "anhistoric"... it's related to the reason why some say "an historic." ;)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ahistoric

Language is so messy.

I say "a historic" and "ahistoric" differently, I think. The first with a hard 'h' and a slight pause between words. The second with soft/no 'h' and no pause. If I heard somebody say "anhistoric" (soft 'h', no pause), I'd think they meant "ahistoric" not "an historic". Of course, context probably makes it clear regardless.

Growing up in DC with Scottish parents was always fun. Rolled Rs, different "wh" sound (Scottish English: wheels vs US English: weels) (noticeable expulsion of air on the 'wh' sound).

Mary (lady), merry (happy), marry (get hitched) all should sound different to me, but in MidAtlantic English they're often the same. Same for Kerrie vs Carrie.

Native BE speaker here, I've seen and heard "an historic" (like ahnistoric) from posher BE speakers than me, but never "an hypothesis" (ahnypothesis?) from whichever social class ... possibly I hang around with the wrong crowd?

Yes, you have been hanging out with the wrong crowd: https://youtu.be/BZLFIRkPmcE

An reason to adore that man. Great video

All the words in this thread are coming from Ancient Greek (hypnosis, history, homo, hoplite, hero etc). In Ancient Greek these words don’t start with an h (υπνοση, ιστορια, ομο, οπλίτης, ηρωας etc).

In Ancient Greek polytonic orthography, vowels can have one of two diacritic marks: οξεία and δασεία. The second one is used to denote the /h/ sound (rough breathing). Words starting with vowels with this mark in their translation to English added the H before the vowel to denote this sound because of the lack of diacritic marks/accents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_breathing

My guess would be people who primarily write, not speak, English. 'h' is a consonant after all, the fact that its like that here may not be apparent to people who write more than they speak English (as a second/third language)

The only example I had previously ever heard of was "an hour" because the H isn't pronounced. As far as I've ever heard it spoken the H in both hypothesis and historical are well pronounced so "an hypothesis" sounds jarringly incorrect to me.

The 'n' is really to help the flow as you are talking, so it depends on if you pronounce the 'h' or not. In british english you would nont say 'an historical' or 'an hyphothesis' since both are pronounced with the 'h'.

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