At 12:22 AM 11/15/05 -0500, Tamara P Duvall wrote: >Take "history"; it's almost always preceded by "an" when written. >Should I, then, say "an istorical fact"? Same for "hotel". I know the >"h" is silent *in French*, but, should I say "an otel reservation" in >English?
Some dialects *do* drop the "h" in "history", or at least suppress it. People who speak those dialects write a lot, which gives folks who speak other dialects the idea that "an historical" is high-toned -- but if you pronounce the h, "an historical" is merely pretentious. If you don't have the speech patterns to go with it, it sounds pretty silly. I've never heard "an hotel" -- and I suspect that the person who said "an hispanic" was hypercorrecting, like the people who say "Whom are you?". Native speakers *can* make mistakes. >And, yesterday - in an otherwise great book - The state of copy editing in America today is worse than abysmal. The fanciest editions contain errors that wouldn't have been tolerated in funnybooks, back when a funnybook cost a dime and was tossed after reading. -- Joy Beeson http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it's thunderstorms today and snow tomorrow. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
