Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...

Gary Shannon wrote:

> "That was an historic event."
>
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
This is a prescriptive rule that never had any basis in linguistic
reality outside those dialects of English that lost their aitches,
which some southern English dialects originally did. So for them,
the use of <an> is entirely reasonable, since the following word
begins with a vowel.

(It's a good example of how weird prescriptivists can be sometimes,
latching onto one tiny little thing and ignoring the larger context...)

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637