usage ridicule

[W Brewer]

RE:  an historic  vs.  a historic.     When I was a student, I mulled this
problem. The convention of the time seemed to have been:  Americans must
write <a historical>. My impression was that British wrote <an historical>.
Pronunciation-wise, I was unhappy with either [uh historical] or [ay
historical], and affected [Anne historical], for which I got negative vibes
at UC Berkeley. (There was also my malaise at the co-existence of
<ahistorical> in the midst of all this.) My problem with [uh h-] and [ay
h-] and affinity for [Anne h-] I think has to do with the fact that [h-] is
merely a voiceless anticipation of the following [small-cap eye] (as Ohala
later taught me), and my articulators tend to precede it with the
prescribed pre-vocalic <an>. And so, as Anne Elephant once famously said,
this is my hypothesis, it belongs to me, and is mine.

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