Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
This one is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I think we've discussed it here before. I even believe the QS and I were on opposite sides of the issue.
My take is that an historical is incorrect. People who use it are trying to sound smart, and maybe even imitate English types who cling to an archaic usage. Simply put if a word starts with a vowel you should use "an". The exception being words that start with a consonant that isn't pronounced, and result in a word that phonetically starts with a vowel. So words like hour, honor, and history are addressed clearly.
The "an historic" camp defend this because for a time the H in history was commonly not pronounced. So rather than History you have 'istory, or 'istoric instead of historic. I have no trouble with preceding either of those variations with "an", especially when speaking. The dictionary pretty clearly calls for pronouncing the "H" in History and historic, so I believe the "an historic" camp are "wannabe smart folk". I will admit that if QS is in that camp, then he is a smart albeit imperfect being rather than a wannabe.
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I don't recall staking out a position on this, but perhaps I have. I find your argument pretty compelling.