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Comment by deafpolygon | Hacker News Reader

“An Historic Day”

Shouldn’t that be “A Historic Day”?

Optionally. "Like many terms that start with a non-silent h but have emphasis on their second syllable, some people precede historic with an, others with a."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/historic

The non-silent h (sound) is itself optional.

No. An is used before vowel sounds, not just vowels. Ive had this corrected many times by brits. Imho, british education is much more focused on speaking english than writing it, which changes the emphasis of some rules. But it sounds strange when speaking in a non-brit accent. "An istoric" v "An historic".

Historic begins with a hard h consonant sound. The h isn't silent. "A historic" is correct.

With that said, I don't personally have a problem with "an historic." I recognize it as a convention adopted by people whose dialect favors the silent h historic.

'owever, "an historic" is more historic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping#H-insertion

The silent h is because words like this were originally French. Victorians started pronouncing the h again.

The difference in accent in relation to the written word between the old and new world is tied to the geographic and religious histories of the two cultures. North American english strives to mirror spoken and written language, whereas the older cultures in the UK see little problem with such differences.

In the case of historic, herb, etc., it's the other way round.

Yes it should. Sadly, some people like to butcher the English language, and it has become acceptable.

Other examples of butchering the English language in this way:

https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.... (line 2875)

https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view....

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