A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
What gets me as a non-native speaker far more than "a vs an" is the "a vs the" conundrum. I still don't quite get when something needs to be "indefinite" and I've been speaking English for close to forty years. My native tongue lacks articles altogether and it's soo bloody hard I feel hopeless I'll ever master them fully.
I was going to start by stating the difference is “a” is unspecific, “the” implies the subject is already known.
However as I thought more about it I realized it gets a little more complicated. I’m not academically studied in English, though I am a native speaker.
For example if you say, “Our town has a castle” - that’s a specific castle but you wouldn’t say “our town has the castle.”
Why? It has to do with what the listener knows. “Definite” means the subject is known to the listener. If I’m introducing a castle into the conversation that you don’t know, I’m talking about _a_ castle. Now that it’s introduced, I can tell you about _the_ castle.
It's because the town has one out of the set of all castles.
You can also say "Our town has the castle", which... now there it gets weird. I think it means it doesn't have much, but it has that. Well I guess it's specific in that it is one of the few (specific) things it has going for it.
"Our town has the castle" would mean that of (all the gin joints in) all the towns in all the world, only yours has a castle. Also not academically qualified, also a native speaker.
I struggle with it too, but my rule of thumb is that "the" signals the reader they should know what specific instance is referred to, whereas "a" introduces a new instance.
But... "So do you want _a_ specific thing, or will any thing work?" sounds kind of correct as well to me. (Disclaimer: I am not native speaker, grain of salt and all.)
don't worry too much. english is such a muddled tongue to begin with that there are many ways of saying something "correctly" and few if any of us know them all. anyone who quibbles over some fine verbal point is probably not someone whose opinion you should value!
that said I know in business communication this kind of thing can be less forgiving. i will say that grammar and syntax checking for non native speakers is one of the few very beneficial applications of LLMs.
Native English speakers living for a decade or more in the Czech Republic (and picking up Czech in the process) may experience "retroactive article confusion", they may start to drop articles while speaking their mother tongue English.
My guess is something Slavic (since Slavic languages lack articles apart from Sorbian). I could be wrong. I don't think Finno-Ugric languages have them either. That's just Europe, there are plenty of such examples elsewhere — Japanese has tonnes of suffixes but no direct equivalent to this?
I'm always curious why sometimes I pronounce the as /ðə/ ("thuh") and sometimes as /ði/ ("thee"). I don't really know what governs this but I expect it's the presence of a vowel at the start of the following word. However, only some vowels. Does anyone have an answer?
I do this too - "thee actual" vs "thuh real" and such. I do expect it's to do with having a vowel sound of a certain kind at the beginning of the next work making you move your tongue in a certain way.
> The British pronounce it as "istory," so they use "an" before.
"The British" aren't monolithic and neither are our approaches to this.
I certainly don't say "it is an historic day" or "staying at an hotel" with the soft H, because to me, in the 21st century, it's an upper class affectation (I am from a middle class background and from the commuter belt 30 miles south of London).
I moved to a slightly posher place and I know people who do say "an historic day" (soft H) still but it's largely out of habit/age/schooling.
The BBC have stopped doing this, as a rule. The monarchy have moderated this aspect of their speech too — I am sure I remember the younger Prince Charles say "an historic day" with the soft H, but I am fairly sure he would now say "a historic day" with the hard H; he has been trying to progressively moderate his RP accent for the last 25 years or so.
No offence taken — I just mean to clarify that the proportion of British speakers who do this an-then-soft-H thing is actually pretty small.
Having said that, there are two constituencies that do it, I guess:
- Those who do it out of upper class background or affectation: using the French soft H that survives in the American pronunciation of 'herbs' is a class signifier.
- And those who do it out of broader dropped-H slackness; it's not out of the question that someone would say "it's an 'istoric day" run together, in a variety of regional and rural accents.
So if you meant the latter, then, yes! Probably more people do it as a result of dropping H more generally than out of upper class identification.
But in the middle of those two, most of us, I think, use the hard H, and certainly "BBC English" has moved in that direction.
They do, but only because it's been adopted from British media and literature. You might even say it's a symptom of being over-read, if that's possible.
"An historic" is certainly used in the US, but it's wrong in all contexts.
Actually, it's a shibboleth. It used to be said in Ireland that Roman Catholic called it "haitch" and Protestants called it "aitch". "Haitch" is to be found furth of Ireland though.
I notice "an" is in decline in some forms of spoken English. I noticed this shift years ago. It is common to hear people say "a (y)apple" rather than "an apple" or "a(y) orange" rather than "an orange". In some case the "y" sound is replaced by a glottal stop (a' apple, a' orange).
A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
What gets me as a non-native speaker far more than "a vs an" is the "a vs the" conundrum. I still don't quite get when something needs to be "indefinite" and I've been speaking English for close to forty years. My native tongue lacks articles altogether and it's soo bloody hard I feel hopeless I'll ever master them fully.
If there's more than one, and you don't care which one, then it's "a". If you care which one then it's "the".
"Pass me a plate" - any plate will do. "Pass me the plate" - I want the specific plate which we were talking about.
I was going to start by stating the difference is “a” is unspecific, “the” implies the subject is already known.
However as I thought more about it I realized it gets a little more complicated. I’m not academically studied in English, though I am a native speaker.
For example if you say, “Our town has a castle” - that’s a specific castle but you wouldn’t say “our town has the castle.”
Why? It has to do with what the listener knows. “Definite” means the subject is known to the listener. If I’m introducing a castle into the conversation that you don’t know, I’m talking about _a_ castle. Now that it’s introduced, I can tell you about _the_ castle.
It's because the town has one out of the set of all castles.
You can also say "Our town has the castle", which... now there it gets weird. I think it means it doesn't have much, but it has that. Well I guess it's specific in that it is one of the few (specific) things it has going for it.
"Our town has the castle" would mean that of (all the gin joints in) all the towns in all the world, only yours has a castle. Also not academically qualified, also a native speaker.
If there was only one castle then you would save the. For example our town has “the giant duck” (fictional fibreglass statue)
I struggle with it too, but my rule of thumb is that "the" signals the reader they should know what specific instance is referred to, whereas "a" introduces a new instance.
Just remmeber that "a" is short for "any". So do want the specific thing, or will any thing work?
If only it were that simple. "I bought a car yesterday" -- Did I buy a specific car?
But... "So do you want _a_ specific thing, or will any thing work?" sounds kind of correct as well to me. (Disclaimer: I am not native speaker, grain of salt and all.)
a specific thing, or is it enough for it to be the thing?
sorry, just joking, this is not meant to be a genuine counterargument^^
I just want one of the new triple-cheese sandwiches please. And the salad of the day as a side.
don't worry too much. english is such a muddled tongue to begin with that there are many ways of saying something "correctly" and few if any of us know them all. anyone who quibbles over some fine verbal point is probably not someone whose opinion you should value!
that said I know in business communication this kind of thing can be less forgiving. i will say that grammar and syntax checking for non native speakers is one of the few very beneficial applications of LLMs.
Tongue?
In this sense, it's a synonym for "language". Usually used as "mother tongue" (meaning, the language one grew up speaking).
Just curious, what is your native tongue?
My guess: Czech. :)
Native English speakers living for a decade or more in the Czech Republic (and picking up Czech in the process) may experience "retroactive article confusion", they may start to drop articles while speaking their mother tongue English.
My guess is something Slavic (since Slavic languages lack articles apart from Sorbian). I could be wrong. I don't think Finno-Ugric languages have them either. That's just Europe, there are plenty of such examples elsewhere — Japanese has tonnes of suffixes but no direct equivalent to this?
(Whether Hungarian qualifies as Finno-Ugric is up for debate, but Hungarian most definitely has determinate and indeterminate articles.)
Fun fact an adder (snake) was once a nadder, and an apron was on a napron. This fun fact brought to you by The History of English Podcast.
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
Happily sourced in Wikipedia so I don't have to figure out which episode I learned that from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder <- see below the table in Taxonomy.
And cherries were ceries from French, leading to the singular form cherry. Lots of neat little things like this.
I'm always curious why sometimes I pronounce the as /ðə/ ("thuh") and sometimes as /ði/ ("thee"). I don't really know what governs this but I expect it's the presence of a vowel at the start of the following word. However, only some vowels. Does anyone have an answer?
I do this too - "thee actual" vs "thuh real" and such. I do expect it's to do with having a vowel sound of a certain kind at the beginning of the next work making you move your tongue in a certain way.
with "the actual" I imagine you're also putting in a kind of intrusive "y" sound so it flows better into the vowel
I grew up in New England.
My experience is that "thuh" is basically a lazy / informal pronunciation of that word.
But it's also by far the most common pronunciation. "Thee" would sound strangely hyper-formal, at least in my circles.
Edit: the sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49770609) also rings true to me.
This is governed by the following word. "Thee" can also be used for emphasis anywhere.
> However, only some vowels
Pretty sure it’s all vowels isn’t it?
“Thee”: apple, evening, island, offer, underpass
“Thus”: any other words where you don’t need to avoid a glottal stop to differentiate the word.
"if words starts with hones" fails for "hones" itself; I suspect that should have been "honest" in the code.
I can tell you did not use AN llm to write this post. Thanks.
Any verdict for "historic"?
Both are being used and neither is incorrect. “An” used to be more prevalent in British English until around 1990, but “a” has become the most used now: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historic%2Ca...
Both occur, but "a historic" is standard choice in modern English.
Since most speakers pronounce the h, it takes "a" not "an".
Contrast to "an hour", where the h is silent.
It depends on if you're speaking British or American English.
The British pronounce it as "istory," so they use "an" before.
> The British pronounce it as "istory," so they use "an" before.
"The British" aren't monolithic and neither are our approaches to this.
I certainly don't say "it is an historic day" or "staying at an hotel" with the soft H, because to me, in the 21st century, it's an upper class affectation (I am from a middle class background and from the commuter belt 30 miles south of London).
I moved to a slightly posher place and I know people who do say "an historic day" (soft H) still but it's largely out of habit/age/schooling.
The BBC have stopped doing this, as a rule. The monarchy have moderated this aspect of their speech too — I am sure I remember the younger Prince Charles say "an historic day" with the soft H, but I am fairly sure he would now say "a historic day" with the hard H; he has been trying to progressively moderate his RP accent for the last 25 years or so.
ETA: clarification in reply to reply
My point is that it's based on pronunciation. I didn't mean to offend you.
No offence taken — I just mean to clarify that the proportion of British speakers who do this an-then-soft-H thing is actually pretty small.
Having said that, there are two constituencies that do it, I guess:
- Those who do it out of upper class background or affectation: using the French soft H that survives in the American pronunciation of 'herbs' is a class signifier.
- And those who do it out of broader dropped-H slackness; it's not out of the question that someone would say "it's an 'istoric day" run together, in a variety of regional and rural accents.
So if you meant the latter, then, yes! Probably more people do it as a result of dropping H more generally than out of upper class identification.
But in the middle of those two, most of us, I think, use the hard H, and certainly "BBC English" has moved in that direction.
The majority of British accents would pronounce the 'h'.
I don't think so. This one seems to defy the rule.
"A his-toric day"
"An his-toric day"
Both seem to work correctly with American pronunciation.
Journalists and films seem to use "an historic" with an American accent, which breaks the rule but still feels correct.
For most words the indefinite article is clear. This one feels weird.
> This one seems to defy the rule.
No it doesn't. If I pronounce the "h", then using "an" sounds weird. If I don't, then "a" sounds weird.
> Journalists and films seem to use "an historic" with an American accent
Curious if you have a link to a video of this, I can't imagine it sounding correct.
They do, but only because it's been adopted from British media and literature. You might even say it's a symptom of being over-read, if that's possible.
"An historic" is certainly used in the US, but it's wrong in all contexts.
As a non speaker, I really hate this rule
I've spent some time thinking about this before, and it provides a clue about the writers accent. For example:
"An 'H'", and "a 'H'" are both equally valid following this rule (by my interpretation), depending on how you pronounce the letter 'H'.
A/an herb, for example.
Most English accents don't drop the "h" in herb, although American influence will change that.
But you can hear "an" used in phrases like "an hotel" or "an historic building", where the "h" is usually pronounced.
/heitsh/ vs /eitsh/. I think it's mostly Irish with the former.
And Australian, I believe.
"I think it's mostly Irish with the former."
Actually, it's a shibboleth. It used to be said in Ireland that Roman Catholic called it "haitch" and Protestants called it "aitch". "Haitch" is to be found furth of Ireland though.
Maybe this could be used to track how some spoken language changes over time in a region or across regions.
I notice "an" is in decline in some forms of spoken English. I noticed this shift years ago. It is common to hear people say "a (y)apple" rather than "an apple" or "a(y) orange" rather than "an orange". In some case the "y" sound is replaced by a glottal stop (a' apple, a' orange).
[Why is this getting voted down? Bizarre.]
No
Eh? I hear both of these on a regular basis. It is a phenomenon.