I have heard people pronounce the single s a million times, like "Jesus' example" is absolutely pronounced like it is written. If you don't want it pronounced that way, don't write it that way. It's super weird to me that anyone would think it's correct to write it omitting the s but expect it to be pronounced with the s intact.

It's kind of like being, oh sure you write "an horrific attack" but when you say it it's pronounced "a horrific attack". Just write what you want people to say.

The ludicrous adherence to the "an h....." convention is a pet hate of mine, btw. It makes no sense, it sounds awful and nobody says it in real life outside of a news broadcast.

It is somewhat antiquated, but I think the problem isn't really the choice of article. That should just naturally follow the pronunciation of the h. For example, everyone says "an honor" correctly because the h is never pronounced. But almost all other words beginning with h should use a hard h sound, and people try to change that to sound "proper". It almost makes me cringe. "Horrific" is a perfect example. The h doesn't get any harder than that one. Saying " 'orrific" sounds like a Dickensian street urchin.

Oh sure, soft h is fine to use "an" with.

Kind of ironic because "harder" is itself a super-hard h.

Would anyone really say "an hard aitch"? That just sounds so bad that I have to think even the drones who slap "an" in front of every h-word would balk at it.

"An" in front of hard h is horrible and even worse is when people try to justify it.

I hate the "his or hers" sht.

aint nobody messin wit my chillen!

What's the verdict on "historic" (which seems to be the most common word 'controversially' preceded by "an")? The H is obviously pronounced, but I think I've heard it said that it's sort of in between soft and hard because of how it flows.

If someone chooses to say "historic" with a silent h then they must precede it with "an". I personally always sound the h in historic and would never use "an historic". This case is still a matter of style and neither is really incorrect.

That said, I don't think any dictionary has the h silent in historic. So it is never incorrect to say or write "a historic".

The problem with these words is that the "h" is never a voiced sound in any word, meaning the vocal cords are not used. It has no phonetic sound, but instead is a type of fricative or breath sound and so there is a lot of room for different degrees of "saying it".

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice...geal_fricative

I'm one of those who would say "an historic", eliding the two words so there is no distinctive "h" sound. But I agree, either is fine. It's just a matter of one's ear. To me, saying "a historic" is almost a glottal stop...just not my preference.

I know that Americans are the only good people of the world who can translate English into English and still make mistakes, but this ****in tilts the absolute ****e out of me.

Why use the correct form on the 3rd attempt but make an abortion out of the first 2?

****ing Norah.

There are correct uses for "would have had", which is called the conditional perfect tense, but the cases above are not good usage.

for example?

I hear the above quite frequently and it seems to be getting worse.

I would have had to explain it to you if you hadn't understood it. And if I hadn't answered then you would have had to ask someone else.

In these examples the hypothetical clause does not contain the phrase, the main clause does. See the difference?

ok before we go any further, it must be established that you are, in fact, for real.

are you for real?

I'm not sure what you mean but my post above was completely serious and my examples used correct grammar. It's only when you try to put the conditional-perfect in the hypothetical clause ("If you would have had..." ) followed by a noun object, that it becomes awkward and ugly.

um yes, like that's what i said.

sorry maybe i wasn't clear. i'm saying this incorrect usage annoys the **** out of me. it seems to me an AE phenomenon that is currently doing work on this side of the Atlantic.

I advocate severe castigation for its use.

Non native speaker here again.

We use "a" before a word that starts with a consonant, and we use "an" before a word that starts with a vowel.

So far, I've always used it in a "as I would speak" manner.

Example:
"User" starts with a consonant and "HTTP" starts with a vowel, yet I use "a" and "an" respectively, because it makes more sense to me this way as it rolls better of the tongue.

Should I adhere to the consonant/vowel rule rigidly, or use roll-off-the-tongue judgement?

HTTP starts with an A sound.

You've got it right, though I think you started it exactly backwards above. "User" starts with a vowel, but it starts with a consonant sound. Go with how it sounds.

This is correct.

Cheers guys.

Yeah, getting it backwards above was just a slip.

Also:

fmp

It's a gift. Glesga = Glasgow

hmm nsfw?

Credit to Swwinn for noticing this:

Non-native asking for help, what's the correct English word (slang words also approved, it's not for an official essay) for this?

Say you get a new boss at work, teacher at school or whatever. For some reason she seems to really hate you and makes you the ______, like she's keeping an extra eye on you for some reason, whenever you screw the tiniest of things up she complains about it in a way she'd complain to no one else, if you screw up bigger time you get bigger punishments than others would.

So for clarity, I'm not asking what you would call the boss/teacher, but if there's a cool word that would underline my (the employee/student's) position under that treatment. Kinda like the center of attention but in a negative way, and also without a public humiliation aspect, just one that's treated unfairly. Google translate from my language suggests "eyesore" but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works in English?

Thanks!