Fwd: usage ridicule

[Eric Nielsen]

I'm not really sure about whether "an house" still occurs in the wilds of
the English parlor. I imagined it was a shibboleth of the British upper
class for many years. A conceit formed from watching BBC period
pieces long ago.

I especially remember one episode (but sadly not the series name) where
this elderly upper class woman was so delighted to meet this young man who
still used "an house" in his speech that she made a point of commending him
for it. The time frame of the series was far beyond Jane Austen's day
because I remember them riding around in motorcars.

Eric

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Fwd: usage ridicule
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I asked another list (one dealing with the 18th century) about
> Austen's "an house", "an husband", and so far have not gotten any
> explanation -- just discussion of the "an before a/e/i/o/u/h" case --
> e.g., "an historical" (for some).
>
> But someone there asked Google for an Ngram for "a" vs. "an
> historical".  It's interesting what happened about 1940.  Quoting him
> without his permission:
>
> >Here's a graph plotting the relative popularity of "a historical"
> >and "an historical" from 1800 to 2000:
> >
> >
> http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historical%2Can+historical&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
> >
> >The explosion of "a historical" around the middle of the last
> >century probably has to do with America's increasing dominance of
> >the publishing world.  Still, limiting it to British English shows
> >"a historical" is still the more common form.
>
> Joel
>
> At 3/27/2012 10:30 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >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. ...
>
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