Articles for Words with Vowel Sounds

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Trish calling from Little Italy in San Diego. How are you?

Hiya, Trish.

Oh, how are you, Trish? What’s going on?

Hi. I have a question for you about using the words an or a before a vowel or a consonant.

And an example I can give you is people often say, I’ll get with you in a half an hour.

But the way I learned it in school is to say a before a consonant and an only before a letter or the word that starts with a vowel.

So I’m hoping you can help me clear that up.

So you think that should be a hour?

Well, I say myself half an hour, but I would write half a hour.

Really?

Yes.

Well, you’re catching yourself.

You’re doing it properly when you’re speaking, and when you’re writing, you’re not doing it properly.

Oh, no. Okay.

Because there’s one extra little tidbit of information.

It’s not preceding a vowel or consonant.

That’s not the rule.

It’s preceding a vowel or consonant sound.

Okay.

So it’s about pronunciation, not spelling.

That’s right.

Well, my co-worker wins the fight.

Oh, yeah? What was on the line?

I forgot, actually. I hope it’s not much.

Yeah, the loser always forgets unless the winner remembers.

It’s true.

But no, this is one that actually throws people for a loop.

And the biggest case is there are a surprising number of people that have problems with the H sound.

We’ve talked about this before.

That’s because hour is not a really good example of this.

But some words that begin with an H followed by a vow, there are parts of the English-speaking world where they pronounce the H.

And there’s parts of the English-speaking world where they don’t.

Hour, I don’t know a single person on the whole planet that pronounces the H an hour.

No.

Do you, Martha?

No.

I can’t think of a soul.

Half an hour and a half hour are kind of confusing, too.

Well, yeah, half hour, that’s a different question.

Yeah.

But I was going to say there’s another example which uses a instead of,

Think about euro, the currency in Europe, E-U-R-O.

It begins with an E, but yet we use a Y sound to pronounce the word.

And although Y is sometimes a vowel, in this case we want to make sure it is a euro and not an euro.

Oh, okay, good point.

Does that make sense?

It’s all becoming clear.

Cool.

Glad to hear it.

Have we solved it for you, Trish?

Yes.

Thank you both so much.

I really appreciate it.

You’re welcome.

Thank you for your call.

Have a good one.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

You know what?

I get stumped sometimes with the simple questions like that.

And what do you do?

Yeah.

Sometimes you’ve got to sound it out.

Right.

Sometimes so much of our written speech does follow from our spoken speech.

Well, exactly.

It’s like trying to tell somebody how to tie their shoes.

You know?

How do you tell somebody?

I can show you, but it’s difficult to sort of break it down.

Somehow related to muscle memory, right?

Yeah.

It’s hard to break it down.

We welcome your question about articles or pronunciation or how to spend an hour.

We recommend you spend it with us.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

And the discussion forum is waywordradio.org/discussion.