Comment on Reality vs Fantasy
CatZoomies@lemmy.world 15 hours agoIn American English, the article “an” is used for a vowel sound to separate the words so they don’t blend together when speaking.
Normally, “a” always precedents a consonant, while “an” precedes a vowel. But “an” also precedes vowel sounds - I.e., the sound of the letter of the beginning of a word.
An apple A banana An hour
Hour starts with a consonant, but is pronounced with a vowel sound at the beginning. Thus, it is not “a hour” and rather “an hour”.
In the case of the example from the meme, id argue that either article works:
- A “I’m…” - Typically when speaking, a person has a brief pause before they begin the quote. Since that pause would be enough to distinctly indicate two separate words, this sounds fine when being verbally spoken.
- An “I’m…” - Looks great in text and would be the correct way to list it grammatically. However when speaking this aloud, since the person would have a brief pause when saying “an” and then the quote, it probably wouldn’t sound as great to some others.
My take - I like “an ‘I’m…’” best. Both in text and verbal form. Others may disagree as far as verbally said; however, grammatically in written form this is how it should be.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
This does get confusing with say…
“A/An herb.”
Because different dialects pronounce herb differently, sometimes the ‘h’ is pronounced, sometimes not.
I know you specified American English, but even within American English, you can find areas that differ on this, and I’m sure there are other words where this kind of thing crops up.