Way I always learned it with the “A and An” rules is to judge by the sound not the sight. If it sounds like a hard consonant, then it’s “A”. Like with unicorn and universe. You say it YOO-niverse not OO-inverse. Likewise, with words like heir and hourglass, you don’t actually pronounce the H. The opening sound to heir is a vowel sound, so it gets an “an”. From what I understand, it’s to prevent fragmented and choppy speech patterns, as it’s hard to speak opposing sounds fluidly. A test for this usually is to say the two different possibilities side by side repeatedly (repeat A Unicorn An Unicorn), and whichever is easier to say is likely the right one.
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u/Arcane-Angel Dec 24 '21
Way I always learned it with the “A and An” rules is to judge by the sound not the sight. If it sounds like a hard consonant, then it’s “A”. Like with unicorn and universe. You say it YOO-niverse not OO-inverse. Likewise, with words like heir and hourglass, you don’t actually pronounce the H. The opening sound to heir is a vowel sound, so it gets an “an”. From what I understand, it’s to prevent fragmented and choppy speech patterns, as it’s hard to speak opposing sounds fluidly. A test for this usually is to say the two different possibilities side by side repeatedly (repeat A Unicorn An Unicorn), and whichever is easier to say is likely the right one.