From: Rod.. Whitworth (listenwitworx.com)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 00:19:53 CDT

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On Thu, 1 May 2003 21:09:50 -0700, Ben Goren wrote:

>Actually, ``an'' is formally preferred over ``a'' when preceeding
>a word starting with a soft ``h.'' You should expect to see,
>``This is an historical moment.'' Many consider this pedantic and
>only use ``an'' before words starting with a silent ``h'' such as
>``hour.'' I'm not one of those many. On the other hand, both
>_The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style_ and the American Heritage dictionary
>prefer ``a.''
>

The use of 'an' as the indefinite article preceeding a word beginning
with an aitch is normal in two cases. One is the silent aitch you
quoted (hours) and the other is for words of French origin e.g.
hospital, historical, hotel and never horse, hand or hat.

Common usage is trending to ignore the latter case as it involves
either knowledge of the French connection or a mental process akin to
sight word pronunciation, i.e. learnt association.

You may be of the opinion that all the French origin words start with
soft aitches and the others hard. We could not discern any difference
in analysis of the pronunciation of any of the words spoken singly by a
wide range of speakers. Francophones do not normally aspirate initial
aitches.

In the beginning was The Word
and The Word was Content-type: text/plain
The Word of Rod.

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