I occasionally get questions and comments about the title of this blog, so I thought I should offer a brief explanation. Why is this blog titled “An Historian Goes to the Movies” and not “A Historian Goes to the Movies”?
Short answer: Because it feels right to me.
Long answer: Obviously in English, we use the indefinite article ‘a’ before words that begin with consonants and ‘an’ before words that begin with vowel sounds. ‘However, h’,’ is a very weak consonant. When it’s the first letter of a word, sometimes we pronounce it (as in ‘happy’) and sometimes we don’t (as in ‘honor’ or ‘hour’), so sometimes it takes ‘a’ and sometimes it takes ‘an’.
In the case of ‘historian’ and related words (‘history’, ‘historical’), we technically pronounce the ‘h’. If you say the word aloud all on its own, the ‘h’ is clearly there. However, the accent in ‘historian’ is on the second syllable, not the first, so there’s a tendency to de-emphasize the ‘h’ and say something a little closer to ‘istorian’. So when the ‘h’ starts to disappear, ‘an’ starts to be more acceptable.
In the 18th and 19th century, the standard rule was to say ‘an historian’, but over the course of the 20th century, American English has tended to shift away from that and say ‘a historian’. But British English still tends to say ‘an historian’. Although I’m American, I grew up watching a lot of British television shows and apparently this somehow crept into my English, because ‘an historian’ simply feels natural to me and ‘a historian’ feels clumsy. Every time I try to say it the American way, it just feels ugly and wrong. So the title of this blog is “An Historian Goes to the Movies”.
If you want a fuller discussion of the issue, here’s one.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
I am Canadian (and thus share in most North Americanisms), but I likewise picked up the habit of saying “an historian” from the British. And spelling mediaeval with an a.
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Have you ever stayed in an hotel?
Brian.
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actually, being from Yorkshire, yes I would
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Sometimes. But the accent falls on the first syllabus, so it’s less common.
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I live in the UK and have never heard nor read any usage of “an historian” that didn’t come from an American.
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I have. I heard ‘an herbalist’ too, but that was a Brit writing for an American audience
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http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/a-versus-an?page=all
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Oh come now, it’s totally pretentious. I still like you, but, seriously…
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It honestly is the way I speak.
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I’m an honest person too but in an historical context, I’ve been an hotel but never to an hospital
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That’s because the H is hospital is fully voiced in most dialects.
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If the word begins with “H” in french, then it is considered silent and the word an should be used. This is why one should say a horse and not an horse as the french equivalent is cheval.
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I’m sorry, but the idea that English pronunciation should follow French pronunciation makes no sense to me. That may be where a word began its evolution into English, but that tells us nothing about how modern English pronunciation functions in practice.
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Just to throw this out there – “an historian” and “a historian” are both 100% grammatically acceptable. English grammar is more flexible than most people realize, and the “rule of thumb” is to use “an” before an “h” word that has a vowel sound. Also, we don’t always use “an” before words that start with vowels. For example, you would use “a” before “unique” in the phrase “a unique story.” It’s the hard vs. soft sound that follows the “a” or “an” that determines which one of the two should be used. If you don’t pronounce the “h” is historian when you say “a historian” and instead say “an (h)istorian” and drop the h sound entirely, the words glide together. Most people aren’t aware that grammar IS a flexible thing, so I wanted to comment and show my support for “an historian” – it is, after all, correct grammar. ;p
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I’ve noticed that the radio show “Backstory with the American History Guys” blurbs its guests with either “a historian” or “an historian.” I’ve never asked, but I assume they ask each guest for their preference. http://backstoryradio.org
I made a case against “an historian” a while back. https://alarob.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/not-an-historian/
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Or it may simply be that for them, it’s easy to slip into either form.
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An historian
A history buff
And yeah so count me old-fashioned (and English) but it is also “an hotel” still for me at least in written things.
And re the following french thing is because many of our words are taken directly from the french (remember those Normans? — wasn’t it that “English” gained about 10K of our words from them?) so adopting some of the grammar along with the words makes sense to me.
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It’s much easier to borrow words than grammar. For example, in English we always put the adjectives before the noun they modify. In French, most adjectives go after the noun. So where we say ‘a black dress’, they literally say ‘a dress black’ (‘une robe noire’). It would be very odd for an English speaker to borrow that grammar, even though we did borrow ‘robe’, although the meaning shifted to a long gown that splits down the front.
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French, like Spanish is a Romance languages, (as in descended from Rome,) Study Classical Latin to understand the noun-adjective-verb relation that seem to confound modern English speakers. English is a hodgepodge, Germanic, Latin, French, Spanish, blah, blah. it descends directly from several roots, not one. Want to know why English is such a mess and why you can pronounce, “tomato” different ways or why, “an hotel” makes sense for one population in the world while “a hotel” does not despite that both groups share a common language? Study a language that does not use articles: Latin — or, for that matter, most Slavic languages. Peace. Or should I say, “Be best.”?
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I was just discussing this with an American author friend. I am a Brit writer but my editor is American and she’d changed ‘a herbalist’ to ‘an herbalist’ – I changed it back. But I wasn’t sure. I write in British English. I thought it was to do with the soft/hard consonant sounds but wasn’t sure.
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“… any man who deserves the name of an historian …” (Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwick, in “Athenian Letters” [1800])
“For although it be necessary for an historian to write the truth …” (“The Works of Flavius Josephus” [1806])
“But though we have rejected Mr. Mac Pherson as an historian …” (Sylvester O’Halloran, in “An Introduction to and an History of Ireland” [1803])
“An Historian, must not, however, confound these three with each other …” (Sir Levett Hanson in “An Accurate Historical Account of All the Orders of Knighthood at Present” [1802])
“Use of Language to an Historian” (Joseph Priestley, in “Lectures on History and General Policy” [1803])
This is only the first five in ten pages of the first section of examples of “an historian” from English writers, via the Google Ngram below — which gives a slow-but-steady rise for “a historian” from 1800 to 2000, but a dramatic decrease for “an historian” from 1800 to 1860 followed by a fairly steady decrease thereafter.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=an+historian%2Ca+historian&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Can%20historian%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ca%20historian%3B%2Cc0
So, yes, it may sound *slightly* pretentious now — in some circles, mind — but is completely justified for … an historian.
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I would typically write “an historian” and usually speak the same. However sometimes I speak “ā historian”, but when using the “ā” instead of “an”, I pause for some reason as in “You’d know her, she’s ā (pause) historian.” Why do I do these things? Because it just sounds, or feels . . . right.
I was taught by nuns.
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A historic occasion
An historic occasion
In grade school back in the 70s in upstate New York we were always taught that ‘a’ was correct. ‘An’ has seemed profoundly awkward since the first time I saw it used. I took to asking ‘Who is Ann and why is she mucking up the language?!?’ LOL
I will say, however, that when folks from various parts of the UK basically drop the h entirely and give it that an ‘istoric sound it is not displeasing to the ears. 🙂
What’s up with American ‘judgment’ and UK ‘judgement’? I must say that I favor the latter. Or is it favour….
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I’m American, and I was taught to say “an historian”.
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New American fan & Love your writings so far!
AN Historian feels right to me.
British accents don’t really emphasize the H in H words.
Example: I’m Hungry
But a Brit would sound like “I’m Ungry”
Just my opinion lol..have never studied it.
:))
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I’m an American and I was taught that, “an historian” is correct (when writing “an” before “h” and vowels). Nevertheless, I was also taught that when speaking, before an “h” the “n” was silent.
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Yes, yes. I found this article when confronted by my own discomfort when typing the phrase “…is neither a philosopher nor a? an? historian.” I sounded it out. I accessed my dusty knowledge of proper grammar and style. “A historian” sounds thudding and disjointed, like listening to unfortunates as they fail to discriminate between the two ways of pronouncing “the” (“thee” as in “thee Earth” and “thuh” as in the “thuh Earth” a.k.a. the sound of an electric vehicle slamming into a wall at 45 miles an hour and bursting into an unquenchable, obliterative firestorm.) So, in all events, I’m pleased and, unfortunately perhaps, reinforced to find my discomfort has compatriots. Thanks!
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I’m a professionally trained historian from New England, where I grew up saying “an historian.” That’s also how I was taught to write it. Fellow history PhDs have accused me of “putting on airs” by using “an historian,” as they don’t recognize it as part of my regional accent. They’re also unaware of their own class biases. My factory worker grandfather would have been thrilled to know that his tendency to put “an” before “h” (as with “historian”) is interpreted by Ivy League grads as fancy talk.
In graduate school both professors and fellow students tried to get me to change how I say words and phrases. They told me to stop saying “an historian” and to stop saying “p’raps,” as in perhaps. Today we’d classify such attacks on regional accents as a microaggression.
My eager-to-correct fellow history PhDs have also picked on me for saying “buh-un” (button), mih-in (mitten), and kih-in (kitten), but that’s how I grew up saying these words. That’s also how some Brits says these words.
I was raised in southeastern Massachusetts, where a lot of immigrants from Lancashire, England settled in the nineteenth century, which likely influenced why I grew up saying and writing “an historian.” Mass. census takers often wrote my Hopwood ancestors name as Upwood, because they didn’t catch that these Lancashire immigrants didn’t always make the “h” sound.
I was also taught in school to use dreamt instead of dreamed, learnt instead of learned, and spellt instead of spelled, etc. (although I’ve given up on spellt in published writing). These spellings are more common in Britain.
And, like a lot of Brits, I say “p’raps” (perhaps). Had grad students, PhDs, and professors not told me I was speaking incorrectly (well, in their limited experience), I’d never know that there’s anything unusual about the way I talk. No one from my hometown ever tells me I’m saying things wrong.
I also answer the phone with ‘ello, which has also not gone unnoticed. I don’t pronounce the “h” in historian either.
But I do pronounce the “h” in “history” and say and write “a history.” I suppose that’s because the accent is on the second syllable in historian and the first in history. With the accent on the second syllable in historian, I don’t pronounce the h in the first syllable.
Both “an historian” and “a historian” are correct, so don’t sweat it. People who have the nerve to correct the way you speak are rude and ignorant and best ignored. When PhDs try to correct me, I just assume that they’re insecure–as PhD programs will teach you to be–and eager to one up anyone else–as PhD programs will also teach you to do–so that they can lessen the imposter syndrome that they picked up in their PhD programs.
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An ‘otel… an ‘orrific, an ‘onourable. Hotel, horror, honourable… etc., are French in origin, so it’s correct to drop the first letter.
RP speech and Cockney Speech converge in dropping the H. Here’s part of a humorous article from the 19th century written by an American complaining about the custom of some authors to follow this rule: “This may do well enough in England, where the sound of h in such words is practically suppressed; but for us Americans to write “an hotel”, “an historian”, “an harmonic scale”, “an hiatus”, “an hallucination”, etc., is simply ridiculous. It is virtually saying in print that on our lips these expressions are sounded an ‘otel, an ‘istorian , an ‘armonic scale, an ‘iałus, an ‘allucination; or else , that we have not independence enough to write as we speak , but must needs ape the English in their writing “an hereafter,” because they say “an ‘ereafter,” just as they write “mine host” because they say “mine oast.””
But it’s completely facile, on the one hand, to call the silent H in “your honour”, “an heir”, “an hour”, or “an honourable settlement” proper English (to aspirate the H in “your honour,” “an heir”, “an hour” or to say “a honourable settlement “would sound idiotic), and at the same time to call “an ‘otel'”… etc., which follows the same grammatical lines of dropping the H in Old French words, an improper use of English.
It’s not a question of accepting advice from your betters on how to speak English. By all means say ‘a hour’ or ‘the hair to the throne’ if you’re not keen on Frenchified English. The English language contains many French words. Latin words imported into Middle English were Frenchified, and before that Greek words were Latinised. This is what makes the English language so adaptable and accepted as a universal language (with a little help from the British Empire).
I suspect an underlying inverted snobbery. The non-aspirated H was common in RP or aristocratic speech, and the class-system isn’t popular among those who would like to see a homogeneous spread of ordinariness in Britain.
This is from ‘Willy’s Grammar, interspersed with stories for the use of children’ 1845:
“You know what aspirating the h is ?”
“Oh, yes !” replied Willy;” I know I must draw a long breath to aspirate the h; you always make me aspirate the h’s when I read.”
“Not always; for they should not always be aspirated. In the word hour the h is not aspirated, nor in the word heir, nor honour; therefore you say an hour, an heir, an honour; not a hour, a heir, a honour.”
“Oh, no!” cried Willy; “that would sound very ill.”
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