English language III.: I | mea hour | an hour

a hour | an hour

The final uncertainty I suffer is that I learned that an 'a' turns into 'an' if the following word starts with a vowel.

I recognize that the letter h is mostly a silent letter. Don’t get me started on silent letters in the English language ;) Back in school we read texts from the school book and I remember being proud when it was my turn after managing some complicated looking words only to fail with sword. I proudly pronounced the w, dumb choice and got corrected by the teacher. You knew the text but not the part you had to read aloud.

This was your fault, the text was known to all, but males are lazy and only take a fleeting look. You were (or is it was?) to check the phonetic spelling beforehand. It was and probably still is the students fault. Luckily corporal punishment was outlawed before I went to school and only the embarrassment remained. By that time I already passed puberty and showed more interest in girls and that didn’t let you look smart.

When I started this I forget the 3rd uncertainty, thus there are three posts instead of one.

To bad you can't correct the title.

Back to topic:
If you read it, I want to vote for: a hour
If you speak it, I want to vote for: an hour

The correct one is "An hour", both for speaking and writing.

A good rule of thumb is that any words that starts with a vowel - a,e,I,o,u - gets 'an'. But it really more matters about the sound. Basically, in this case the h is silent in hour. Such is the case in alot of similar words - heir, honest, hourglass. Because the h is silent, you're starting with an O, which is a vowel. But take X-Ray for example. When you say it, the first sound said is 'Ex', and that starts with a vowel, so it's 'an X-ray.

That's the gist of it. It really depends on the sound rather than the word that begins. Really do hope that helps.

"An hour" is correct but you would say "a house" or a "hat", because as said above there are a few common words beginning with an h which is silent.

English is relatively unphonetic and is a compendium of other European languages over centuries so there will always be words which sound different to their spelling such s "sword". And anything ending in "ough" has a multiple of possibilities - bough, though, through and riough are all pronounced differently.

@ Nelon

That's what I said, a vowel turns 'a' into 'an'. Our German English teachers were attached to rules. Around grade 12 we had an English English teacher. That really sounds silly. ;=) who gave us more freedom. Like you decide on American English or British English in your essays, but no switching. If you write color in line one no colour, armour or flavour later on. Then he would decide 10x color and 1x odour could mean 1 or 10 mistakes, his choice.

Your example with X-ray is interesting, luckily I normally say Röntgen after the guy who discovered it. :=)


@ mobile_carrot

On you tube I discovered the channel robwords who is English and mostly talks about the English language. He is married to a French woman (the nationality not the other definition) and lives in Germany according to himself.
I discovered him because he has video 'Why is England called England?'
Somewhere he says 1066 is an important year for the English language and that the English vocabulary has 2/3 French and Latin originated words but at the same time it's a Germanic language
England is the land of the Angeln (n not s since the Angeln were a Germanic tribe from the area of Jutland 'Schleswig Holstein')
.

Hotel is interesting. 50 years ago the H was silent so an hotel. Gradually it ceased to be silent so it is now a hotel. There is another aspect to this, posh or old fashioned people persist in pronouncing hotel with a silent h so it is an hotel. If someone writes an hotel it says something about the speaker--probably, these days, that they are pretentious.

Geoffrey.

Geoffrey
Chuckling at the pretentious. It was at Oxford that I first came across people saying “an ‘otel” or “an ‘istoric event”.

Oh and Moody, it doesn’t matter for writing because it looks the same but in speaking “the” in front of a vowel is pronounced as “thee”.

@ KatiePie

Until now I mostly attributed thee to be a dialect thing. It seems it isn't ;)

Subtitles if provided don't match the spoken text exactly. Though even provided you can't exactly analyze the text.

In 4th grade I loved subtitled films. It allowed me to watch them until late in the night without alarming anyone that I wasn't sleeping. Only many years later I realized that the crack below my bedroom door gave away the flashing TV screen not the non existent sound. When I got scolded they didn't tell me how they knew about my naughty behavior. Parents aren't as dumb as you believe at age ten. ;)

KatiePie, regarding 'the' before a vowel, is that only in parts of England. I have never heard it before?

Thee vs The

Being unaware of this phonetic difference, I've tried playing with it. Pick some nouns starting with a vowel--elephant, elderly relative, emphasis etc. Speak them out loud with the and thee. I found that elephant preferred thee, but emphasis preferred the.

Suspect there is no rule so in different parts of the country, with different accents, you should just go with what sounds right.

Of course thee (spelt and pronounced like that) has another meaning. It is an archaic form of "you".

thou - singular informal, subject (Thou art here. = You are here.)
thee - singular informal, object (He gave it to thee.)

Geoffrey.

@ Geoffrey

Following your explanation it seems thee is more of a dialect thing and not a spelling rule. When we got the English English teacher it was quite a different approach to the German English teachers. Probably not because the Germans were female while the English was male.

The females tended to drown you in red ink while you could discuss everything with the male one.
The discussion was on English though. A potentially better score made you overcome any problems and embarrassment with speaking.