Tommay85
Well-Known Member
Sorry, but "an" will forever, and only go with a vowel or a number that starts with a vowel to me. Your example "an historian" makes me want to dispatch a heard of domo-kuns after a litter of kittens!As far as Grammar goes, I stick to the "historian" test. Poor grammar or elocution is like Pornography...you know it when you see it. And it will, always and forever, be "an historian", not "a historian". It's like nails on a chalkboard to even type the later. However mightily the forces of "new age" grammar might labor (labour?), there will always be things that are simply, well, "beyond the pale", yes?
Here's what I've always believed to be the Final Word on the subject. DFW, as usual, speaks my heart.
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.htmlDid you know that probing the seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a nearly hanging-chad scale? For instance, did you know that some modern dictionaries are notoriously liberal and others notoriously conservative, and that certain conservative dictionaries were actually conceived and designed as corrective responses to the "corruption" and "permissiveness" of certain liberal dictionaries? That the oligarchic device of having a special "Distinguished Usage Panel ... of outstanding professional speakers and writers" is an attempted compromise between the forces of egalitarianism and traditionalism in English, but that most linguistic liberals dismiss the Usage Panel as mere sham-populism? Did you know that U.S. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?
It you find that even slightly interesting, it really is worth reading the whole thing.