[Gllug] [OT] speaking French in France

[Pete Ryland]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 08:11:04PM +0100, John Winters wrote:
> What I was talking about however was the phenomenon of using "an" before
> *any* word beginning with h.  I've recently heard in the meeja, "an
> horse", "an historic", "an helicopter" etc.  It makes me want to beat
> them around the head with an hedgehog.

Part of this 'phenomenon' is actually quite old, and the theory is that
words which don't have an accent on the first syllable are considered to
have a weak 'h' and hence the use of 'an' over 'a'.  This covers 'an
historic' and a few others, but obviously not 'an horse' (unless of course
the h is silent, but we've already covered that).  It was mostly Mark
Twain's comments that this was pretentious that brought about the fall of
this exception.  IMO, it does indeed make it easier to pronounce, so either
way is perfectly fine.  This all of course also extends to the way the word
'the' is pronounced, and archaic vowel-preceding possessives like 'thine'
and 'mine'.

Pete
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