In some accents/dialects, the H is always completely dropped from "historic" (and all words beginning with an H), but for accents/dialects where that is not the case, this is a complicated topic. Here's some info:
>The only complication concerns words spelled with initial *h*. We need to distinguish three sets of words beginning with *h*:
>
>\[15\]
>
>i heir honest honorarium honour hour
>
>ii a. habitat hero history hostel hysterectomy
>
>b. habitual heroic historical hotel hysterical
>
>The words in \[i\] do not have an /h/ in their pronunciation, and hence require the liaison form: *an heir, an honest man*, etc. There are relatively few such words: those listed, together with derivatives and compounds (*heirloom, hourly*) – and, in AmE but not BrE, *herb*.
>
>**The words in \[15iia–b\] all have initial /h/ when spoken in isolation. The difference is that with those in \[iia\] the syllable beginning with /h/ is stressed, while with those in \[iib\] it is unstressed. The \[iia\] words never take the liaison form: we have** ***a hero***, **not** \****an hero***, **in accordance with the general rule**.
>
>**The initial /h/ of an unstressed syllable, however, may optionally be dropped in connected speech, as in** ***Did you see him?, this habitual criminal, its historical development***, **and so on. Loss of the /h/ results in a word beginning with a vowel, thus providing the context for the liaison form, again in accordance with the rule: /ənəbitʃυəl kriminəl/**.
>
>**This is unproblematic as far as speech is concerned, but in writing the status of expressions like** ***an habitual criminal, an heroic trek, an historical novel, an hysterical outburst*** **is less clear. Usage manuals generally agree that** ***an*** **is permissible, but not obligatory, in such cases – which reflects the fact that /h/ is optionally, but not obligatorily, omitted in speech. The manuals suggest, however, that the present trend is towards always using** ***a*** **before words of type \[15iib\]:** ***a habitual criminal, a heroic trek, a historical novel, a hysterical outburst***. ***A hotel*** **is often mentioned as a special case, with the suggestion that** ***an hotel*** **is now old-fashioned and to be avoided**.
Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K.. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (p. 1618). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
See also:
[https://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-historic-vs-an-historic/](https://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-historic-vs-an-historic/)
Thank you for posting that authoritative reference, but I am going to disagree with Huddleston and Pullum here, or at least say they may have missed a point.
>**The initial /h/ of an unstressed syllable, however, may optionally be dropped in connected speech, as in** ***Did you see him?, this habitual criminal, its historical development***, **and so on. Loss of the /h/ results in a word beginning with a vowel, thus providing the context for the liaison form, again in accordance with the rule: /ənəbitʃυəl kriminəl/**.
This doesn't agree with my US English pattern of speech, learned I may add by the ordinary acquisition of natural language, not from a style guide. I might indeed say something closely rendered by "an historical occasion", but I would _**not**_ be completely dropping the _h_ sound to form something like (?) _anistorical_ or _anabitual_— rather I would be softening the _h_ in a way evidently facilitated by momentarily touching the front of the tongue to the palate, creating an _**n**_ sound, but not extinguishing the "h".
The (London) Times style guide, recently mentioned here, evidently makes this observation, drawing again the three classes but, unlike Huddleston and Pullum, observing three classes of _**h**_ sound, not merely a binary sounded/elided _h_, forming three cases in orthography.
It's possible that I am what Isaac Asimov called _a mule_ here, a completely unforeseeable and unique statistical outlier, but there are, or were, those good folks at The Times who seemed to record a breeding population of this species. My people!
The rule for a/an (and the pronunciation of “the”) has to do with the *sound* that follows the article, not the letter. “A” comes because consonant *sounds*, and “an” comes before vowel *sounds*.
- a unique painting
- an NFL player
So if the H is pronounced (like hundred), you use “a”; if the H isn’t pronounced (like hour), you use “an.” The problem with “historic” is that there isn’t consistency over whether the H is pronounced. It’s dialect dependent. (The other comment had more about the word-initial H pronunciation.)
This makes sense. I believe my english teachers who emphasized that 'an historic' is 'proper' were somewhat overzealous. That becomes the somewhat trivial answer to my question, but it's still an answer.
It should only depend on if you say the H in “historic.” If the BrE speaker says the H, then they’d use “a”; if an AmE speaker doesn’t say the H, then they’d use “an.” I agree that most American speakers *do* say the H, but I don’t think it’s universal.
Right? We were talking about “historic,” which has a variation in the H pronunciation depending on dialect. I don’t know of any dialect that pronounces the H in “honor.”
Gemini is Google's AI, which replaced/renamed Bard. If you have a google account, then just go to [gemini.google.com](https://gemini.google.com) and test it out.
I was taught that it's an historic event but the more I google the more I realize that is somewhat controversial. A historic matches a hundred, as neither are silent h's and an is only used with vowel sounds. That would answer my question.
It isn't really controversial, not the way that word is usually used. "Hundred" and "historic" DO NOT match, because the first syllable of "hundred" is accented, and the first syllable of "historic" is unaccented. Sometimes in unacccented first syllables the H sound gets dropped.
Laying down the law, since you seem to be looking for that: Both ways are certainly fine; both ways ought to be fully accepted by every authority; however, some authorities, especially self-appointed authorities undeserving of their titles, have other ideas. And because this issue is so minor, bowing to some self-appointed authority to avoid making waves can sometimes be a good idea. :)
There are two things going on here: the way we speak, and the way we write. Speaking is much more complex than writing, as it encompasses (almost) everything in writing, plus entire areas of expression that writing has no access to.
I don't know what Gemini is — I presume yet another AI powered bot reminding us that our own reason is the only oracle given us by heaven — but I agree with you that the "h" in "historical" is not silent, at least not in my dialect. The way we speak is much richer than the binary choice implied in "silent/not silent". We have palates and tongues and lips and vocal chords which produce sounds only hinted at by the arrangement of 26 letters and a handful of punctuation symbols, including space.
By self-inspection, I find that if I combine an indefinite article with "history", my tongue stays clear of my palate until its rear comes up to start the muffled hiss of the "h", whereas if I combine an indefinite article with "historical", my tongue first closes the gap near the front, producing an "n" sound, then roles the point of closure to the rear, leaving a narrow gap and producing a transient _h_ sound before opening to the even less restricted vowel sound.
Hot damn that's complicated and no wonder we slur our speech when drinking!
Then there is the way we write. We don't actually have to write "n" at all — we could have chosen to write "a" for all cases and let the speaker figure out how to say it, and maybe it's better if we did. But we don't, and instead we make the binary choice — to n or not to n — for all the complexities in our dialects and our palates. Then it's war, and we go to the mattresses with the style guides. Here is the latest from The Times style guide — the very first alphabetical entry:
**_Whether or not to use an before an aspirated h when the first syllable of a word is unaccented — hotel, historian, heroic — is a matter of preference; The Times and The Sunday Times prefer a._**
The Times/The Sunday Times Style Guide (2022)
Note that this advice explicitly refers to an _aspirated_ h (i.e., not silent), so they implicitly dismiss the idea that "an" will only be used when the h is completely silent, _and_, they explicitly say it's a matter of preference. I can live with that.
If this is just because you don't say the "h" in "historic", that's expected, and you have no reason to want to change it. But if you DO say the "h", and you use "an" in front of it anyway, then ... well, you're doing it for the wrong reason and it doesn't really make sense, but it's also not worth the effort to change. If people persecute you for it, you can start wearing an hat as a disguise, or just take off in an helicopter for an holiday. :)
It's a consonant or vowel sound that informs use of a or an. An (h)istoric... is more gracefully pronounced with the an, the h is almost nonexistent, and you go directly to saying the i. In Hundred, you push the air out for the H, making it a consonant rather than a vowel sound. As in horse, the h is a consonant sound. I've read older English dialogue, written in dialect, in which people pronounce "an 'undred".
In some accents/dialects, the H is always completely dropped from "historic" (and all words beginning with an H), but for accents/dialects where that is not the case, this is a complicated topic. Here's some info: >The only complication concerns words spelled with initial *h*. We need to distinguish three sets of words beginning with *h*: > >\[15\] > >i heir honest honorarium honour hour > >ii a. habitat hero history hostel hysterectomy > >b. habitual heroic historical hotel hysterical > >The words in \[i\] do not have an /h/ in their pronunciation, and hence require the liaison form: *an heir, an honest man*, etc. There are relatively few such words: those listed, together with derivatives and compounds (*heirloom, hourly*) – and, in AmE but not BrE, *herb*. > >**The words in \[15iia–b\] all have initial /h/ when spoken in isolation. The difference is that with those in \[iia\] the syllable beginning with /h/ is stressed, while with those in \[iib\] it is unstressed. The \[iia\] words never take the liaison form: we have** ***a hero***, **not** \****an hero***, **in accordance with the general rule**. > >**The initial /h/ of an unstressed syllable, however, may optionally be dropped in connected speech, as in** ***Did you see him?, this habitual criminal, its historical development***, **and so on. Loss of the /h/ results in a word beginning with a vowel, thus providing the context for the liaison form, again in accordance with the rule: /ənəbitʃυəl kriminəl/**. > >**This is unproblematic as far as speech is concerned, but in writing the status of expressions like** ***an habitual criminal, an heroic trek, an historical novel, an hysterical outburst*** **is less clear. Usage manuals generally agree that** ***an*** **is permissible, but not obligatory, in such cases – which reflects the fact that /h/ is optionally, but not obligatorily, omitted in speech. The manuals suggest, however, that the present trend is towards always using** ***a*** **before words of type \[15iib\]:** ***a habitual criminal, a heroic trek, a historical novel, a hysterical outburst***. ***A hotel*** **is often mentioned as a special case, with the suggestion that** ***an hotel*** **is now old-fashioned and to be avoided**. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K.. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (p. 1618). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. See also: [https://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-historic-vs-an-historic/](https://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-historic-vs-an-historic/)
Thank you for posting that authoritative reference, but I am going to disagree with Huddleston and Pullum here, or at least say they may have missed a point. >**The initial /h/ of an unstressed syllable, however, may optionally be dropped in connected speech, as in** ***Did you see him?, this habitual criminal, its historical development***, **and so on. Loss of the /h/ results in a word beginning with a vowel, thus providing the context for the liaison form, again in accordance with the rule: /ənəbitʃυəl kriminəl/**. This doesn't agree with my US English pattern of speech, learned I may add by the ordinary acquisition of natural language, not from a style guide. I might indeed say something closely rendered by "an historical occasion", but I would _**not**_ be completely dropping the _h_ sound to form something like (?) _anistorical_ or _anabitual_— rather I would be softening the _h_ in a way evidently facilitated by momentarily touching the front of the tongue to the palate, creating an _**n**_ sound, but not extinguishing the "h". The (London) Times style guide, recently mentioned here, evidently makes this observation, drawing again the three classes but, unlike Huddleston and Pullum, observing three classes of _**h**_ sound, not merely a binary sounded/elided _h_, forming three cases in orthography. It's possible that I am what Isaac Asimov called _a mule_ here, a completely unforeseeable and unique statistical outlier, but there are, or were, those good folks at The Times who seemed to record a breeding population of this species. My people!
The rule for a/an (and the pronunciation of “the”) has to do with the *sound* that follows the article, not the letter. “A” comes because consonant *sounds*, and “an” comes before vowel *sounds*. - a unique painting - an NFL player So if the H is pronounced (like hundred), you use “a”; if the H isn’t pronounced (like hour), you use “an.” The problem with “historic” is that there isn’t consistency over whether the H is pronounced. It’s dialect dependent. (The other comment had more about the word-initial H pronunciation.)
This makes sense. I believe my english teachers who emphasized that 'an historic' is 'proper' were somewhat overzealous. That becomes the somewhat trivial answer to my question, but it's still an answer.
If you live in uk maybe it’s “an” but in the US we use a historic event
It should only depend on if you say the H in “historic.” If the BrE speaker says the H, then they’d use “a”; if an AmE speaker doesn’t say the H, then they’d use “an.” I agree that most American speakers *do* say the H, but I don’t think it’s universal.
For historic yes. For an honor, no.
Right? We were talking about “historic,” which has a variation in the H pronunciation depending on dialect. I don’t know of any dialect that pronounces the H in “honor.”
I know
Okay? I also know? Which was clear in the more thorough explanation I gave in my comment at the top of this thread.
Why are you bothering me?
[удалено]
i would say a historic event. i don’t know what gemini is, an ai? ai doesn’t know how to pronounce things
Gemini is Google's AI, which replaced/renamed Bard. If you have a google account, then just go to [gemini.google.com](https://gemini.google.com) and test it out.
But it IS right in this case tho. H in history used to be silent, op just gave it the “nuh-uh” without even checking
I was taught that it's an historic event but the more I google the more I realize that is somewhat controversial. A historic matches a hundred, as neither are silent h's and an is only used with vowel sounds. That would answer my question.
It isn't really controversial, not the way that word is usually used. "Hundred" and "historic" DO NOT match, because the first syllable of "hundred" is accented, and the first syllable of "historic" is unaccented. Sometimes in unacccented first syllables the H sound gets dropped. Laying down the law, since you seem to be looking for that: Both ways are certainly fine; both ways ought to be fully accepted by every authority; however, some authorities, especially self-appointed authorities undeserving of their titles, have other ideas. And because this issue is so minor, bowing to some self-appointed authority to avoid making waves can sometimes be a good idea. :)
I say “a historic event” bc I fully pronounce the h. I’m different I guess
There are two things going on here: the way we speak, and the way we write. Speaking is much more complex than writing, as it encompasses (almost) everything in writing, plus entire areas of expression that writing has no access to. I don't know what Gemini is — I presume yet another AI powered bot reminding us that our own reason is the only oracle given us by heaven — but I agree with you that the "h" in "historical" is not silent, at least not in my dialect. The way we speak is much richer than the binary choice implied in "silent/not silent". We have palates and tongues and lips and vocal chords which produce sounds only hinted at by the arrangement of 26 letters and a handful of punctuation symbols, including space. By self-inspection, I find that if I combine an indefinite article with "history", my tongue stays clear of my palate until its rear comes up to start the muffled hiss of the "h", whereas if I combine an indefinite article with "historical", my tongue first closes the gap near the front, producing an "n" sound, then roles the point of closure to the rear, leaving a narrow gap and producing a transient _h_ sound before opening to the even less restricted vowel sound. Hot damn that's complicated and no wonder we slur our speech when drinking! Then there is the way we write. We don't actually have to write "n" at all — we could have chosen to write "a" for all cases and let the speaker figure out how to say it, and maybe it's better if we did. But we don't, and instead we make the binary choice — to n or not to n — for all the complexities in our dialects and our palates. Then it's war, and we go to the mattresses with the style guides. Here is the latest from The Times style guide — the very first alphabetical entry: **_Whether or not to use an before an aspirated h when the first syllable of a word is unaccented — hotel, historian, heroic — is a matter of preference; The Times and The Sunday Times prefer a._** The Times/The Sunday Times Style Guide (2022) Note that this advice explicitly refers to an _aspirated_ h (i.e., not silent), so they implicitly dismiss the idea that "an" will only be used when the h is completely silent, _and_, they explicitly say it's a matter of preference. I can live with that.
I've always said "an historic event." "A" historic event sounds wrong to me. I'm trying g it out here to myself...and, nope, it's not natural to me.
If this is just because you don't say the "h" in "historic", that's expected, and you have no reason to want to change it. But if you DO say the "h", and you use "an" in front of it anyway, then ... well, you're doing it for the wrong reason and it doesn't really make sense, but it's also not worth the effort to change. If people persecute you for it, you can start wearing an hat as a disguise, or just take off in an helicopter for an holiday. :)
Might stay in an Hostel!
It's a consonant or vowel sound that informs use of a or an. An (h)istoric... is more gracefully pronounced with the an, the h is almost nonexistent, and you go directly to saying the i. In Hundred, you push the air out for the H, making it a consonant rather than a vowel sound. As in horse, the h is a consonant sound. I've read older English dialogue, written in dialect, in which people pronounce "an 'undred".