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nilaybadavne
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"a user" or "an user"? 27 Mar 2011, 19:41
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Hello folks,

While writing a document today morning; when I typed in "an user", MS Word showed me a grammatical error and changed it to "a user". I was baffled and shaken as I sucked at a very basic grammar rule.

Somebody please enlighten.

~Nilay.

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vivesomnium
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"a user" or "an user"? 27 Mar 2011, 21:42
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Use of a or an are not determined by spelling, but pronunciation. any word which sounds like it begins with a viwel (may or may not actually begin with a vowel) will take an. and any word whihc begins with sound of a consonant will take 'a' as preceding article.
E.g.
user,university both begin with sound of 'yu..' Hence, 'a' is the article used for them.
hour begins with a consonant, but we always say 'an hour' why? because the first sound when the word hour is pronounced is 'aww.' sound of a vowel.

I hope this makes it clear.. you can consider many other examples.. 'a one-day match' is correct, not 'an one-day match', reason being while one begins with a vowel, the sound is that of a consonant - w.
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nilaybadavne
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"a user" or "an user"? 29 Mar 2011, 02:22
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vivesomnium
Use of a or an are not determined by spelling, but pronunciation. any word which sounds like it begins with a viwel (may or may not actually begin with a vowel) will take an. and any word whihc begins with sound of a consonant will take 'a' as preceding article.
E.g.
user,university both begin with sound of 'yu..' Hence, 'a' is the article used for them.
hour begins with a consonant, but we always say 'an hour' why? because the first sound when the word hour is pronounced is 'aww.' sound of a vowel.

I hope this makes it clear.. you can consider many other examples.. 'a one-day match' is correct, not 'an one-day match', reason being while one begins with a vowel, the sound is that of a consonant - w.
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Thanks! That clarified it. I was not aware of it.
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"a user" or "an user"? 29 Mar 2011, 23:40
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Letters are just and abstraction layer for sounds.

Quote:

On a side note:
meaning -> speech (sounds) -> characters.
well, at least in most languages =) I do not know Chinese/Japanese, etc, but I've always imagined the mapping there is more like:
meaning -> characters.
It is like with many walks of life - adding an additional layer of abstraction may seem to add complexity, but it actually reduces it...
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And letters do not always behave the same way (i.e. do not always result in the pronunciation of the same sound).
I find rules that depend on the actual sound (rather than the letters) much more logical.

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