A or An before H: What is judicious?

Indranil Sarkar
17-11-2014
It irritates me; and I believe it irritates all. Whenever I see an eminent scholar or
at least a scholarly person uses An before History, Historic or any other H word
where H (aiech) sound is distinct and not silent like Hour, Honour etc. my little
knowledge on the usage of indefinite article derived from the traditional English
Grammar books gets serious shock and confusion overpowers my poor
intelligence. In such cases, in more than one occasion, I consulted the Grammar
books by authoritative grammarians and each time got serious torments to
agitate my sensibility. I got utterly frustrated in seeing how the Kings English
language has been decoyed and degenerated since last three/four hundred years
just for the fulfillment of the snobbish whims or ego of some scholarly
personalities.
The rule in this regard clearly states that An should be used before a silent H
followed by a vowel; but, in case of a consonant H or a pronounced consonant
H sound, A is to be used.
Now, H in History or Historic is not silent, though followed by a vowel i. We
dont pronounce istory or istoric. It has a distinct Aeich sound like Home,
Hotel, Honey, Hurry, Horrible, Humour, Hate, Hatred, Hurried, Hand,
Hundred etc. In all such cases H is a pronounced consonant. In recent times H
has got a pronounced consonant status even in Heir, Humble, etc.
Some European ethnic groups cant pronounce H properly and that is why

scholars from those ethnicity use An before H. But, that cant be a reference or
justified reason for the scholars of a country like India which has started studying
English literature even before the English thought their language and literature
worthy to be studied in their Universities.
While trying to find out the root of this faulty practice, a very amazing fact came
to my notice. I found that the faulty usage was fostered by the English scholars
and elites and not by the half-educated English or so called native users. English
elites of 16th and 17th century who studied in French Universities and who were
directly associated with French language and culture, brought this problem to
their language. Originally it was simply a snobbish practice of the English scholars
who applied Grammar rules of French in their own mother tongue just to show
their acquaintances with the French cultural heritage. It was simply a tendency to
assert their cultural superiority over their fellow men. In course of time this
snobbish misuse injected by a handful of so called culturally superior Britons
inculcated an incurable faulty-tradition in the whole domain of English language
all over the globe.
In this regard, the view put forward by Fee and McAlpine in their book published
in 1997, is worth mentioning. Fee and McAlpine (1997) expressed their frustration
in the following words: British usage guides are recommending A against the
unnecessary An. It is probably time for Canadians to let it go too.
Historical Background
The dispute regarding the use of appropriate article before historic and
historical is not new, although the restriction of the dispute largely to those two
words is of more recent date. Hill house (1928) quotes a piece titled Humble

Petition of the Letter H from the Grub-street Journal of January 24, 17334, in
this regard. In it, the letter H begs leave to remonstrate against the prevailing
custom of authors or printers, or both, who always set the article An before a
word that begins with H: by which method they injuriously deny that he [i,e H]
is any letter at all. H regrets that they do neither call him a vowel, nor a
consonant. H continues by asserting that it is already by a good custom settled
for speaking that words in which H is pronounced are preceded by A. He
complains, If men will write An house, an horse, an high-lander, they ought
to read so, too. But if it be ridiculous to read so, it must be as ridiculous to write in
this manner.
Actually the problem arose out of French influence. Following the French
grammatical rule and customary usage, the elite English started considering H as
silent in English also. It began as early as the 16th Century and reached its climax in
the 18th century. Although there is a deliberate tendency to cast off this inherited
defect and restore the original pronounced [h], printers and writers still often
prefer the 18th Century tradition(as they do with many points of spelling). Not
always, however.
Mark Lieberman (2004) tracked usages of An hero using the literary database of
www.lion.chadwyck.com and tracked more than 60 authors who used it. He
found three authors belonging to the last half of the 17th century; the numbers
increased to a peak around 1800, and then dropped sharply to 1900. So, he
concluded that there seemed to have been a vogue and one that came about not
in concert with the French influence but rather more in line, perhaps, with the
late-18th-century flush of prescriptivism.

The use of An came to be restricted to h-words with an unaccented first syllable,

like historian and historic. But even that had come to deprecation, though not
disuse, by the late 19th century. Hillhouse commented quoting the 1888 New
English Dictionary:this is all but obsolete in speech and writing A becomes
increasingly common in this position. He added an admonition from the noted
prescriptivist H.W. Fowler in his 1926 Dictionary of English Usage: now that
the h in such words is pronounced the distinction has become pedantic, and A
historical should be said and written.
But the problem persisted. In 1929, Louis N. Feipel published a survey of 300
books, divided equally between American and British authors, and showed the
inclination to the faulty practice equally persistent among the English and
Americans.
In the 21st century, an historic is still seen and widely thought correct and,
even more notably, a historic is thought by many to be wrong. The situation is
such that the more descriptivist New Fowlers Modern English Usage(Burchfield
1996, 2) allows the choice of a or an as a matter of personal preference. Most
modern style guides and expert writers on the subject disagree.
As such, as an Indian user of English, I feel every Indian should follow the
traditional rules of Grammar and use A before H when it is a pronounced
consonant. Sometimes simplicity solves many difficult problems.
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