We may say: use “an” before a word that begins with a short vowel sound? “u” can make three sounds as in up, unit, put, which are short vowel, long vowel, and the third sound respectively I think you are right to say we use “an” depends on the sound.īut, ‘u’ is a vowel, not right to say it has a consonant sound.
Hence an may be seen in such phrases as “an historic”, “an heroic”, and “an hôtel of excellence” was the by-line in an advertisement in a New York City newspaper” Pronouncing it as a “long a” does not do this, but as the pronunciation cannot be prescribed, the word is spelled the same for either. Pronouncing a as a schwa can diminish the sound of the schwa and melt into the vowel. “Some words beginning with the letter h have the primary stress on the second or later syllable. Rich, here is the answer for your questions (it comes from Wikipedia): It doesn’t start with a vowel sound, and yet all my history text books, articles etc use ‘an’… I’ve been wondering about this for a while, and why is ‘historian’ after ‘an’? I tried to research a bit, but indeed “yu” is closer to what I was trying to express :). Maeve, thanks for taking the lead regarding the phonetic alphabet. Hmm, come to think of it, most of us pronounce the “i” in “union” as if it were a consonant “y.” How would we spell that phonetically? Using a capital U to represent the long sound of “u,” maybe It’s tricky to represent sounds without using the phonetic alphabet, but I think something like “yuh” would be closer to the consonant sound of the letter Y. Question: did you mean to write “yo” to represent the “y” sound in “union”?
#Another word for ruler of nations free
In fact this is the first post answering “readers’ questions.” If you have any feel free to ask us!
And I really like your blog … keep up the good work. I never knew that the usage of ‘a’ and ‘an’ depends on pronunciation.
50 Rhetorical Devices for Rational WritingĨ3 Responses to “Using “a” and “an” Before Words”.Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below: Similarly, you should use “an NBC reporter” (because “NBC” is pronounced “enbisi”) and “a NATO authority” (because “NATO” begins with a “ne” sound). While we say “a light-water reactor,” the abbreviation is “an LWR.” First of all you need to understand if the abbreviation is pronounced as a single word or letter by letter. Abbreviationsĭeciding which version you should use with abbreviations is the tricky part. Similarly you should say “a union” even if union begins with a “u.” That is because the pronunciation begins with “yu”, which is a consonant sound. You should say, therefore, “an hour” (because hour begins with a vowel sound) and “a history” (because history begins with a consonant sound).
Notice, however, that the usage is determined by the pronunciation and not by the spelling, as many people wrongly assume. The rule states that “a” should be used before words that begin with consonants (e.g., b, c ,d) while “an” should be used before words that begin with vowels (e.g., a,e,i). Raphael asks: When should I use “a” and when should I use “an” before the different words? For example, should I say “a hour” or “an hour?” I stumble over this everytime and dont’t know if I’m getting it right, as I’m not speaking and writing English natively. Using “a” and “an” Before Words By Daniel Scocco
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