An Honor to Bash “an Herbal Pill”
I find it an honor to wait an hour for an honest man. But the stupidity of “an” historic achievement, “an” herbal product and “an” hypothesis is too much to let go. Well I am talking about the use of articles.
I thought the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ was correct in all the following examples.
A house
A historic blunder
A hunk
An hour
An honor
An honest man
However, MS Word™ teaches me something different. I was typing ‘a herbal remedy’, when it suggested ‘an herbal remedy’, which I wouldn’t accept. Then I thought how many people have dared publishing this blunder in the internet. I found 1,840,000. If you have doubts, check it here. The number of people who uses it in the right way is a minority – 519,000 only. Here is the biggest example that majority does not mean ‘right’.
Our grammar teachers have always told us to use ‘a’ before a word that starts with a consonant sound and ‘an’ with a word that starts with a ‘vowel’ sound. The examples they repeatedly taught were:
An hour
An honest man
A European
A university
In the first two cases, the words sound ‘owr’ and ‘onest’ respectively. In the third and fourth cases, they sound ‘you-ropean’ and ‘you-niversity’. And, the use of a or an in all those four examples are justified beyond doubt.
If that is the case, what is basis of passing ‘an historic’, ‘an herbal’ and ‘an hypothesis’ as right?
Does the wrong use by a majority make it right? Does diluting grammar rules like that make English more beautiful? Do anyone derive some kind of pleasure by mutilating English grammar rules like that?
PS: I am not a scholar. I am not for strict following of grammar rules either. However, ‘an historic blunder’, ‘an herbal remedy’ and ‘an hypothesis’ just irks the hell out of me.
Liked it
Click the icon to the left to subscribe to Writinghood with your favorite RSS reader.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I can say what I was taught: it depends on the type of ‘h’ you are articulating.
IIRC they are called hard and soft ‘h’s and a practical test is whether or not the word sounds the same without the leading ‘h’. The hard ‘h’s are the ones that change the sound and they are treated like consonants. The soft ones do not change the sounds and are treated like vowels.
‘erbal’ is the same as ‘herbal’ and ‘onor’ as ‘honor’
but
‘istoric’ does not sound the same as ‘historic’ and ‘ypothesis’ does not sound the same as ‘hypothesis’.
So ‘herbal’ and ‘honor’ are treated like they start with a vowel but ‘historic’ is treated like it starts with a consonant.
It is an honor to have an herbal tea with you.
A hypothesis is often taken as a historic fact.