I'm not a native speaker, but "a historic day" feels very awkward to me, while "a history report" feels natural.

Could it be because the stress is different? "uhn-is-TO-ric DAY" vs "a HIS-to-ry re-PORT".

Great thread by the way.

I am a native speaker (some day I hope to be fluent) and you are absolutely right. No one would say "a historic day" and the main reason is that the "h" in this case is silent (or nearly so), whereas in "a history report", the "h" has a definite consonant sound to it.

This rule holds throughout spoken English. Use "an" for a following vowel sound, "a" for a following consonant sound. And this isn't just one of those picky rules that nitpickers love, it arises from the very reason you pointed out: doing it differently sounds awkward.

I hope I made myself look like a dumbass for mouthing these words for two minutes, but you have a point there.

It obviously depends on how you pronounce it, as the way I have heard it pronounced many times is with the "h" as non-silent. Therefore it's not incorrect either way, you just have to adjust based on your "h"-ness. If I'm not mistaken, in the US it seems like the "h" is usually pronounced.

IIRC, there's an episode of '24' where this exact clause is said out loud. I'm gonna have to dig it up and get back to this.

what? nobody i know would say an historic.

i mean yeah obviously if you pronounce historic "istoric" then you should put "an" before it. but who the **** says "istoric"

Oh I dunno. There's like a billion people in the world who can speak english. Obviously not everybody knows (or cares) how to adjust to something like this, but we'd still have a hundred million left or whatever.

I don't remember what I was taught to say, but if my read on my teacher is correct, it would be "an historic", so you know...

i'm just talking about americans here, we know nobody else matters.

plenty of newscasters say it just to be douches. you can tell because they say "an historic" and CLEARLY pronounce the H, which is not only wrong but you can tell they're trying to go the extra mile to be pretentious.

Wow. We have fallen so far.


Never mind — you should just stop posting in this thread.

For some unknown reason my Dad leaves the "H" of the following words:

historic
huge (Yoooooge - although he would say "a yooooge" kinda like The Donald does)
Houston (even though we live here and nobody else does it)

Mostly I just think it's funny and make fun of him. No idea where he picked this up. He grew up in the inner city of St. Louis. His parents were really old though, he was born in 1950 but his dad was born in 1904, mom 1908 I think, so they were of a different generation - maybe they talked like that.

I haven't done any research on this to give out anything resembling a number that you should rely on, but aren't there at least as many dialects in the US English as there are individual states in the country?
Just sayin'...

Of course, you know, a little "outside the box" thinking; USA isn't the first, and certainly not the only country in the world that speaks English.
Now we just wait for someone from England to come and say "it's our language, you f*cking ruined it".


Case and point.

it's not a question of dialect at all really.

I think it's a fluke DNA mutation that could occur in anyone

Surely you mean 'case in point'?

I assume you're being sarcastic here, a la the "could care less" people, but... just in case anyone reading this might have a heart attack, I'll be the guy that points out that it's "case in point."

Then what is it?


You know, this is a nitty thread, so I could grab onto this statement, but I'm just going to say that it's not possible. You can do the rest.


Guilty.


How did that get dragged into this? It's a totally different thing to argue about facts compared to arguing about hypotheses. Am I right?

it's just about the rules.

By whose definition?

Didn't mean to upset anyone. Just chiming in with my opinion. Sorry you disagree, but you seem like the kind of person whose company I would detest anyway. So..... bite me.

A new one for this thread, slightly further afield but related imo, particularly with the pronunciation turn the thread has taken:

When people read prepared speeches — even those that are prerecorded, meaning there's no excuse — that contain comma-delimited lists, and their inflection is consistent with the sentence ending after the first item in the list.

For example: "The fruit basket contained apples [inflection down, slight pause]... bananas [back up], and pears [back down as it should be, though often not as low as on the first item in the series].

I could understand (well, almost — a comma is not a period) making this mistake when seeing copy for the first time, but it's endemic to prerecorded news bites and even advertisements.

I say "an historic" usually although I could see myself saying the other way too. Usually the h is somewhere between silent and the h in history.

It might be, does anyone have evidence either way?

Mark Twain on humble, heroic, and historical: "Correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words."

That being said, I think it's perfectly fine to use an when you're speaking--as long as your pronunciation of the h is sufficiently weak to make this construction sound natural. If we're talking about the spoken word, it is a matter of dialect.

But the written word is a different story, and although I personally wouldn't look down on someone for writing an historical--I might not even consider it an "error"; "suboptimal" might be a better description--I would choose a simply because it's a safer choice in terms of not offending nits.

Argh.

i dunno. let's go with the rules most people agree with. i mean i could make the same stale "by whose definition" argument about other things too. like what if i think the plural of moose is meese? who's right?? omg!!

His usage here doesn't bother me as much as when people say "That being said" and then proceed to just tack on more evidence or agreement with the first statement.

Something like:
Roger Ebert loves Titanic. That being said, I love it, too!

I guess a "However" is more appropriate in the post you quoted though.

I have to review parts of speech with my freshmen because of the middle school's ineptitude.

I was shocked that they knew all the irregular plurals (at least some kids). It wasn't as surprising they knew goose, moose, or radius. I was shocked that they knew the plural of phenomenon,though.

That being said, this last sentence should piss off PJ.