A honor"...certainly not...
"An honor"...just fine.
Again, sound is the determining factor.
Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I can provide you with low-cost, remote Database Administration services: see our website and contact me via www.dasages.com]
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I love logging onto Tek-Tips. It's always so exciting to see what the hell I
said yesterday. [/blue]
Honour and honour, colour and color, UK and US variants. The early British dictionary-makers made an uneasy compromise between sound, origin and habit. Sound cannot be predicted from spelling (rough dough-faced ploughmen wandering through Slough; Gloucester and Manchester etc.
The US dictionary makers failed to straigten it out but did introduce some irritating changes to a few common words.
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An old man who lives in the UK
The rule was presented by sleipnir214 above. Use 'a' before consonant sounds and 'an' before vowell sounds.
Whether or not a leading 'h' is pronounced or silent is really a separte separate issue, but it does impact this thread. In those cases where the 'h' is pronounced, how strong is the 'h'? The stronger the 'h' pronunciation, the stronger the consonant sound, increasing the likelihood of using 'a'. Conversely, the weaker the 'h', the stronger the vowell sound becomes, therefore increasing the likelihood of using 'an'.
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For me the dividing line is hotel. I am perfectly happy with either 'an hotel' or 'a hotel' and the pronunciation depends on context. However, this probably says more about my UK Thames Valley commuter belt accent rather than any linguistic rules. I'm with sleipnir214 on this one. It's how you say it that counts. c.f. Rosie's transatlantic herb.
When in doubt, write it as you would prounounce it.
I, having learned English on the western shore of the Atlantic, would write "an herb", because it is the inexplicable custom here that the "h" be silent in the pronunciation of that particular word. I imagine on the easter shore of the Atlantic (or at least on a certain archipelago near the easter shore), it is written as "a herb", because it is the peculiar idiom there that this beginning "h" be not silent in this word.
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