Fwd: usage ridicule

[Laurence Horn]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Eric Nielsen <ericbarnak at GMAIL.COM>
> Date: March 27, 2012 7:17:53 AM EDT
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: usage ridicule
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> 
> I (dimly) remember being taught a rule that h-words with an accented first
> syllable were to use an "a"; those with an unaccented first syllable used
> an "an". Monosyllabic h-words also used an "a". Do monosyllabic words have
> accent? I always wondered about the British "an house".

Does this really still occur?  I know it was still appearing in Jane Austen, where there are many sequences of "an house", "an husband", etc., which I assumed wouldn't have been pronounced as written, although that's just a guess. (And wasn't Esau "an hairy man" back in King James's day?)   The rule you were taught is actually natural for me, so I can say either "an historical accent" with an unstressed and vowel-initial first syllable in the adjective a or "a historical accident" with some (secondary/tertiary) stress and an initial h- in that syllable.

LH

> 
> Not that I really care much one way or the other, but I am a(n) "an
> historical" guy.
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 3:51 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: usage ridicule
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> I had the same impression about US vs. UK usage. I was shocked when I
>> found myself saying "an historical" perhaps in my thirties. I'm still not
>> 100% sure, but I think "an" reduces to "a" in stressed contexts in my
>> speech.
>> 
>> Benjamin Barrett
>> Seattle, WA
>> 
>> On Mar 26, 2012, at 9:57 PM, W Brewer wrote:
>> 
>>> 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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> 
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