海角大神

Few people would disagree that the spread of the coronavirus is historic, having 鈥済reat and lasting importance.鈥� (We hope that it will soon be historical, 鈥渃oncerning past events,鈥� too.) English speakers do disagree, though 鈥� sometimes vehemently 鈥� about how to use these two words with the indefinite articles a/an. Is it 鈥�a historic event鈥� or 鈥�an historic event鈥�? And what鈥檚 behind the argument?

The difficulty dates back to the Norman Conquest of England, in 1066. Before William the Conqueror invaded, Old English was chock-full of guttural h鈥檚, as in the first word of the poem聽鈥淏eowulf鈥�: 鈥淗waet!鈥� (What!) The language of the conquerors, Norman French, was full of h鈥檚, too, but only when written down. Since it was descended from Latin, it often spelled words such as honour, humor, and herb with 鈥渉鈥� as Latin had, even while it dropped the sound in pronunciation. The French word for 鈥渕odest or lowly,鈥� for example, was often written humble but pronounced 鈥渦mble.鈥�

English adopted these words and continued to spell and say them the same way for hundreds of years. In the late 19th century, Baron Aldenham, director of the Bank of England, complained when the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary dismissed his pronunciation of humour 鈥� 鈥測umour鈥� 鈥� as 鈥渙bsolete.鈥� Meanwhile, some dialects of English had dropped nearly all their h鈥檚, not just those in words derived from French. Such 鈥渉鈥�-dropping came to be seen as terribly low class and ill-bred; think of Eliza Doolittle in 鈥淢y Fair Lady.鈥澛�

The Victorian middle classes adopted 鈥渉鈥� as a way to differentiate themselves from the Elizas of the world, pronouncing the letter when it began a word. Victorians got so 鈥渉鈥� happy, though, that they started to hypercorrect, enunciating 鈥渉鈥� wherever they found it, even in some of the French-derived words 鈥� hospital and hotel, for example.听

Though the pronunciation and social significance of 鈥渉鈥� changed radically in the 19th century, our familiar rules for indefinite articles still applied. If you aspirated 鈥渉鈥� in hotel, it was 鈥�a hotel,鈥� because we use 鈥渁鈥� before consonant sounds. If you dropped the 鈥渉鈥� and said 鈥渙tel,鈥� you used 鈥�an,鈥� since in that case the word begins with a vowel sound.听

Not all French-derived words made the jump at the same time, however. Many English people said 鈥渁n otel鈥� right into the 1940s, and Americans still say 鈥渁n erb鈥� when talking about herbs.听

Multisyllabic French-derived words like habitual, historical, and historic are laggards in this transition to the enunciated 鈥渉.鈥� They are stressed on the second syllable, so that 鈥渁n historic鈥� rolls off the tongue more easily than 鈥渁 historic.鈥� A third of English speakers thus still write 鈥渁n鈥� with these words.