Hacker News Reader

You're spot on about how we say "an herb" in the US. Interestingly, it seems "hotel" is the exact opposite... I've never heard someone in the US drop the "h" . We say "a hotel".

EDIT: Wow, five overlapping replies in two minutes, all correcting the "hotel" thing... Just goes to prove the aphorism that the best way to get help on the internet is to post an incorrect answer (perhaps Cloudflare should have tried that...)

In the UK we say "a herb" and pronounce the H.

Don't you also pronounce the "h" in hotel? I always say (and write) "a hotel" instead of "an otel".

Depends what part of the UK you're in, where I grew up the H would be dropped. But yes, the proper English pronunciation would be "a hotel".

Thanks. English is not my first language and I never heard it with the H dropped before, so I was afraid I was just chronically exposed to an error and copied it.

Right, and occurring to the GP, you _don't_ pronounce the H in Hotel. The exact opposite is true in the US.

The neat thing is (to me), his rule still makes sense. If I were listening to someone who spoke a dialect of English different than mine, it would still sound natural if they chose their "a" vs "an" in the "right" way:

# yes a hotel an 'otel

# no an hotel a 'otel

I (northern UK based) find "an user" feels wrong as to me the "y" implied by the way "u" is pronounced is a consonant sound so it should be "a user" - though I pronounce the "a" in a softish manner (more towards "ey"), it might be different if you pronounce "a" harder or pronounce the "u" as more towards "oo" (reducing the y-like mouth movements).

Regarding herb: in written word it is "a herb" for correctness, though few in the north pronounce it exactly that way as the "h" is dropped to produce "an 'erb" or sometimes (though this makes you sound uneducated due to certain stereotypes) more like "a nerb" (this time with the harder "a" as in "an".

  It's nonsense like this that makes me pity you brave fellows who attempt to master our pidgin of a language!

The fairly arbitrary set of incompatible rules and standards that make up the English language mean it is difficult to learn perfectly (especially as there are arguments as to that "perfectly" means in this context) but it makes the language easy to learn to the point where you can survive using it in the languages native land(s) easier than many others. We are so used to subconsciously processing all the different accents we have in the relatively small area that is the UK and the extra nuances that creep in from elsewhere (poor education, influences from other cultures mainly via TV/film & music, etc.), that unless we are feeling pedantic we also naturally screen out the mistakes non-native speakers make.

It is common to respond to people apologising for their bad English with something along the lines of "don't worry, I deal with worse from people who have been here for generations". We are not being patronising here (well, at least some of us aren't!): sometimes we genuinely do have to internally correct/translate more when talking to someone from 300 miles away than we do when talking to a Pole/Spaniard/what-ever who is not (yet) particularly fluent in English.

For "hotel" and some others, I believe the difference is whether or not the "h" is aspirated. That is, whether or not you take a short break at the word boundary. If you say it "in one breath", you get "an-(h)otel" with a very soft h and no or very little aspiration.

If you make the word boundary more pronounced, you get "a hotel" with a clearly noticeable air-burst, and a clearly distinct "h".

Same process as with "herb" etc. and some other words that can be pronounced both with and without aspiration in English.

This is much the same as in French, where if the preceding word end in a vowel (with certain exceptions) and the current word starts with a vowel sound, you can usually elide the last vowel in the preceding words except when the "h" is aspirated. My French teacher liked to say that the French "thinks" they are pronouncing the "h" in those few cases (aspiration usually refers to cases where there's a strong burst of air in pronouncing the sound, but in French "aspirated h" does not actually involve fully pronouncing an "h", though there may be some aspiration)

(I may confuse this - this is based on recollection of my French classes 20 years ago...)

There is a scene in Hot Fuzz where the police have to take along an 'interpreter' so they can talk to a West Country farmer who is speaking English, but with an amazingly strong accent. This scene was apparently based on a real event they saw during their research for the film.

(I think it's 'west country'... I'm not quite up-to-speed on my UK regional dialects)

English is not my first language but I believe your "show's" should be "shows".

Sorry for being pedantic but since we are on topic I thought it would be relevant to bring it up.

Fair enough!

As you can see from the rest of this conversation (and the way my points for the article has swung violently from -1 to +6 and and is falling back again) I'm clearly no expert despite having been born to it! :)

It's a lot more simple than everyone is making it out to be.

You base a/an on the sound of the first syllable rather than what the first letter is.

An hour. An herb. A hotel. An HMO. An REI. A one-off. An MRI. An fMRI. An SEO. A DOE building. A user. All of these are for US English pronunciation.

UK newspapers all seem to agree on 'a hotel' but disagree on 'an historian'.

http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-h

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/143530...

http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a#node-21532141

I've generally used the Economist in my past writing and they say:

  An
  An should be used before a word beginning with a vowel sound 
  (an egg, an umbrella, an MP) or an h if, and only if, the h 
  is silent (an honorary degree). But a European, a university, 
  a U-turn, a hospital, a hotel. Historical is an exception: 
  it is preceded by an, the h remaining silent.

Which begs the question — what was my victorian-style, Scottish primary school teacher on about when she insisted on 'an hotel'?

Teachers can be wrong, but maybe some words are pronounced differently with a Scottish accent. And the "or an h..." part is redundant because "honorary" starts with the sound "on". I've never heard "historical" pronounced with a silent "h" though.

Pronunciation is highly regional, an if you pronounce "hotel" without voicing/aspirating the "h", then "an" is appropriate. When newspapers use style-guides, they are after consistence as well as "emulate" a certain spoken voice consistent with their profile and target demographics.

It certainly raises a question, but how is this circular reasoning?[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

It's not. Note the second paragraph where it mentions modern usage.

  In modern vernacular usage, "to beg the question" is
  sometimes used to mean "to raise the question"

> It's a lot more simple than everyone is making it out to be.

>

> An herb.

Erm...

It depends on how you pronounce it. In the US the "h" is silent and it's pronounced "erb".

So Herbie (the car) was 'erbie? Cockney-style?

no, it was pronounced "her-bee" but herbal is pronounced "err-bul". Again, this is only for US English, not sure about UK.

A Herbie toy.

An herbal tea.

I agree that "err-bul" for herbal is quite common in the US. However, "erb" for herb is not.

It might be a regional dialect. Growing up in the west coast, I have never heard "her-bal tea", but rather always heard "er-bull tea". Hearing the "h" sound in "herb" (as I do whenever I hear British (and Australian?) speakers speak) was always very jarring, until I realized that it was just that they pronounce that class of words differently than we do.

It's possible that in the eastern or southern US, they say the H in "herb".

I'm not aware of any American dialect of English that aspirates the h in "herb."

http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/drying-herbs-96752.html

Whew, that was easy. Next time, try some of the 100 million people living on the east coast.

I listened to that video, and did not hear any aspirated 'h's in 'herb' or 'herbal'.

Your snark is rude and uncalled-for.

This isn't universal in USA.

What part of the US pronounces the H in herb?

I don't know that it's a regional variation, but about half of the people in my family pronounce the "h", including me most of the time. My sense is almost that dropping the "h" is an "educated" thing, and those who don't drop it are unconsciously tweaking the whole concept.

What part of the country do you live in if you don't mind me asking?

I'm just curious so that I can try to imagine the accent.

I live in the southeast, we say things like reckon, yall, and wander, but "erb" is still the accepted way to pronounce herb 'round here.

As far as I know, it is. We try to make French words sound French.

That would be "herbe".

This is not actually an inconsistency. "an" is used when the next word starts with a vowel phonetically, not when orthographically.

I never heard of anyone in the US using "an herb" and I've lived my entire life there. Also never heard the 'h' not being pronounced. I mostly lived in the East/Midwest, so perhaps the pronunciation differs elsewhere by region.

I grew up in the American South and always heard "herbs" pronounced without the H, and correspondingly "an herb" was used.

I feel bad upvoting you when you're hijacking the thread's potential relevant comments. But I really need comments like yours and you're awesome! I learned two things I didn't know thanks to you.

This off-topic digression was made possible by the submitter's rewritten title: "PowerDNS on losing Cloudflare as an user".

Since the article's title is neither linkbait nor misleading, we reverted to it, or rather to a shortened version of it that fits the 80 char limit.

I'm also demoting this subthread as obviously off-topic. It makes little sense for a bikeshed discussion like this to occupy the top slot of the top discussion on HN, but these things get reliably upvoted.

My apologies.

No need! It was a fine digression in and of itself, and I share your desire to help with the subtleties of English.

The trouble comes with the upvotes that make the digression into a top subthread. Bikeshedding is a collective creation that no one particularly intends.

It feels to me like there's a simple and elegant solution to this problem waiting to be discovered.

Originally it was a reaction to the in-built desire I (and I suspect most of us) have to immediately jump in and make a correction to someone else's English. It was an experiment in trying to say something useful and positive instead. It was an interesting result. I'm not sure I'd repeat it.

I've done the exact same thing and come to the same conclusion. In any case, your good intentions were clear.

I wouldn't be so sure about the 'an' before hotel. That may be regional as well. I'm from the southern US and use 'a' there. However, 'an' would be used whenever the 'h' isn't voiced, which in my case would be words like honorable and honest.

> Another common exception is 'Hotel'. It takes 'an' rather than the expected 'a' as for some reason we drop the 'H'. For me it rolls better off the tongue with 'an' but this may purely be due to conditioning.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in Australia I don't think I've ever heard 'an hotel'. It's always 'I'm going to a hotel'

Saying 'an Hotel' makes me pronounce 'Hotel' in a very uncomfortable way.

Interesting. As I said - my view is from the UK - I should have put 'often' or 'sometimes' before it (although I was taught 'an hotel' at school).

As a southern Englishman, i would say, and expect to hear, "a hotel". I associate "an hotel" with Northerners, Cockneys and speakers of Estuary English, and perhaps also posh people (although maybe that's Northerners or Cockneys trying to be posh, in the mode of Hyacinth Bucket).

"an hotel" is just wrong in my experience, which I think is where "people trying to sound posh" comes into it.

The south and the "posh" (there is quite some overlap there as there is a perception that the south is more posh and the north more rough) use "a hotel" which is also technically correct, as you move north the "h" gets dropped so "an" becomes correct, though if you are writing that you should have a apostrophe to indicate the dropped letter (an 'otel) - in fact the 'postrophe is sometimes even pronounced by way of a very small pause (this is often a clue when decided if someone has a particular accent or is just imitating it).

I was taught 'an hotel' in Scotland by a very old-fashioned teacher. She could, of course, have just been plain wrong and I've been carrying this with me for decades repeating the mistake. Checking the UK newspaper style guides they seem to all insist on 'a hotel'.

Yeah, this is a mostly American hyper correction. You see the same thing with "an herb". I'm guessing it's a relic from people who spoke French affecting the same pronunciation in English. You occasionally even see "an history"

In US English, I've only ever seen 'a history', but I have seen 'an historian'. I'm really not sure why.

"historian" is a fairly long word. If you stop to create a word break, and then aspirate heavily on the "h", it can be uncomfortable to say. If you don't, then the "h" can get very soft if people try to say the whole word quickly and I imagine that some people drop the "h" entirely because of that, or make the "h" so soft it feels natural to contract

May well be a regionalism an well. I say an herb and don't pronounce the H. But a hotel (or a history) and do pronounce the H--and hence use "a." There are a number of words that can go either way because the (acceptable) pronunciation covers both variations.

A unicorn.

A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier.

A one time thing.

English is a pain even for non ESL and that's especially true in the South!

A wun time thing.

I'm a native English speaker and I can guarantee you that I'd never knowingly say or write "an hotel".

Speaking of which, is it appropriate to us 'an' in front of 'hysterically'?

    Yes I do, because YOU are such an hysterically funny 
    person. Did you notice how I used "an" there properly?

~ Josh Lyman, The West Wing

That would depend on how you pronounce "hysterically".

Do you voice the "h" or not?

If you pronounce it "iss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "an".

If you pronounce it "hiss-tear-ick-lee" then you'd use "a".

Personally I've never heard the word pronounced with a silent "h". I checked several dictionaries and they all list the word with voiced "h". None of them even list the silent "h" as an alternate pronunciation.

Therefore I would say that the voiced "h" is the correct pronunciation, and "an hysterically funny person" is wrong.

Given the "did you see" comment, it's a good example of a hypercorrection:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

Good point, but I believe you mean "pidgin of a language"!

Indeed I do. Bloomin' autocorrect changed all sorts of words I missed that one :)

Easiest way to remember, if the sound of the word's first letter starts with a consonant sound, you use a. If it starts with a vowel sound, you use an.

> an herb

Yep.