OT: The correct use of 'an'

Anne Diamond was a TV presenter yeah, from Brum IIR.

Tom Thumb raises an interesting point, which cut’s to the core of our typey, online discussiossiion here, one that’s not been raised here yet.

we are blurring the vboudaries between written and spoken language, and raissing grammatical issues by consequence. You can imagine someone very well bred and finely spoken saying “an hotel” dropping the haitch and getting away with it.

but what manner of speech will those who read your words use to read them in? and how will they approach acronyms? spel or fill out?

or wot?

aracer – Member

<whoosh> for Jeremy

😳

You approach acronyms and abbreviations phonetically thus it is a UK individual (because the U in UK is pronounced in the same way as you) but an FBI agent (because F is pronounced in the same way as the first syllable of efficient).

From Fowler’s:

Amoral is a novelty whose progress has been rapid. In 1888 the OED called it a nonce-word

Blimey, there’s no need for that 😯

The Fowlers thing has reminded me.

A lot of words beginning in h come from the french, where it is very rarely (if at all?) pronounced. French used to be the language of court in England, so those words are “most correctly” pronounced following the french pronunciation of a silent h, and consequently preceded by an an.

Interestingly, the french may have at one stage pronounced their hs. Look at “hôtel”. the circumflex over the o replaces an s which once followed it (made it easier to write, took up less space cheaper on paper or something(?) so hôtel used to be hostel, which we also use in English, a word which must have into English usage before “hôtel” and from which I think no-one, no matter how toffee-nosed, would drop the h and recede with an an.

If you turn to p394 of Fowler’s (2nd Ed.) – i presume everyone has a copy – you will see ‘nonce word’ defined as “…a word coined for a single occasion”.

I think I need a copy of fowlers. 🙂

Ah… interesting.

On another random tangent, what’s their definition of “definition”?

Blimey, I love this stuff! “a nonce-word” = something used once.

once is a french word pronounced with a hard (?) “o” (like opposite)

So we’re back with the migration of the n from “an” to the start of the word that once required it.

Now that’s tidy. End of thread, surely!

In my copy of Fowlers there is no mention of the word “gullible”.

BJ: hah, really? got excited there.

totally wrong anyway:

once
c.1200, anes, from ane “one” + adverbial genitive. Replaced O.E. æne. Spelling changed as pronunciation shifted from two syllables to one after c.1300. Pronunciation change to “wuns” parallels that of one. As an emphatic, meaning “once and for all,” it is attested from c.1300, but this now is regarded as a Pennsylvania German dialect formation. Meaning “in a past time” (but not necessarily just one time) is from mid-13c. Once upon a time as the beginning of a story is recorded from 1590s. Slang once-over “inspection” is from 1915. At once originally (early 13c.) meant “simultaneously,” later “in one company” (c.1300), and preserved the sense of “one” in the word; the phrase typically appeared as one word, atones; the modern meaning “immediately” is attested from 1530s.

No definition/entry for definition or gullible in my copy.

not even a picture?

an teallach

CaptJon – Member
No definition/entry for definition or gullible in my copy.

It doesn’t have an entry for ‘Skeptical’ – go and look if you don’t believe me

Our Scotch friends will know that in Gaelic, there’s a word “an” which means “the” Actually, maybe they won’t seeing as none of them speak it. And of course, following Celtic logic, there’s no word for “a” (i.e. the indefinite article). Just a word for “the”; if you mean a something, you just use nothing at all.

an phoblacht