My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

a u nique event, an u nusual event
a h orrid man, an h onourable gentleman
an hour, an h our and a h alf.
a E uropean, an E skimo

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a e ulogy, an e pigram
a f ootball match, an F A Cup final
We say a unique event because we pronounce the letter u in unique as a hard y
sound – yoonique . We pronounce the h in horrid  ,  but  not  in  honourable  .  We
say the f sound in football , but we pronounce FA as eff A .
Similarly,  abbreviations  such  as  MP  or  SAS  –  pronounced  respectively  em  pea
and ess a ess, sound as if they begin with vowels, and so we say she is an MP ,
he is an SAS man.
See Me After Class: There is no h at the beginning of the word aitch .
An historical note
‘He was sojourning at an hotel in Bond Street.’
A
NTHONY
T
ROLLOPE
Here’s a hypothesis – or rather four separate but vaguely related hypotheses – on
words beginning with h and an unstressed syllable (or why some people say an
history , an hotel and an hypothesis ) :
1.     Once  upon  a  time  all  educated  people  spoke  French  and  so  pronounced
history, such as the French word histoire , with a silent h . Appropriately they
gave it the article an .
2.     Some  –  less  well-educated  and  therefore  non-French-speaking  –  people
spoke badly, were lazy about pronouncing their aitches , and so got into the
habit of saying an ’istory .
3.   Educated people disliked dropping aitches, so began to pronounce them in
French words that traditionally used the article an : an history .
4.   People spoke too quickly, running together the words a and history , so that it
became  pronounced  anistory  .  When  they  paused  for  breath,  and  separated
things out a bit, they thought the word must be an history .
Note the inherent snobbishness of these hypotheses. It crops up a lot in the study
of language.

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But  whatever  the  origins  of  the  practice  may  be,  the  rule  is:  if  the  h  is
pronounced (as in history , hotel and hypothesis ), the correct article is a ; if it is
not pronounced (as in honour and hour ), use an .
Swot’s Corner: Some of those old grammarians who decreed that an should be
used before an h did so because we aspirated less in those days. Aspiration is the
release of air that comes out of our mouths when we speak. If you try talking to a
candle flame, you should notice that the flame definitely flickers when you say
hotel or history (aspirated), but much less so when you say ’otel or ’istory
(unaspirated). On the other hand, if you try talking to a candle flame, people may
think you are just a tiny bit sad.