I was trying to write the sentence, "if he/she is not 'an' United States citizen..."
Compared to this sentence that I know is correct, "she was an electrifying girl."
Is there a logical reason why we use "a" to describe the adjective "united" instead of "an"?
- Posted:
- 3+ months ago by auburngat...
- Topics:
- write, sentence
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Responses (2)
I was told it's because 'united' is pronounced with a 'y as in yellow' sound. Since the sound is a consonant sound it gets the 'a'. Words like animal start with a vowel sound and therefore are preceded by 'an'. So the rule is go by the sound and not the actual letter.
Yes and no. Language is not built, it grows. The way we talk depends on the way we talk. Maybe that's logical and maybe it's not. In Japan the general rule is "always a vowel between two consonants", so they say things like "isu cureamu" when we say "ice cream". In English the rule is "Always a consonant between two vowels", and then forget the rule at odd times.
The sound of a is "eh-ee" and the sound of u is "ee-oo" so to say "eh-ee ee-oo" seems to have the consonant we want. If we inserted the n it would be "an oo" and that is not the sound we want there. Because we all know it's "ee-oo-nited", not "oo-nited".
The bottom line is that's the way we talk. In Hawaiian and Japanese it is normal to have an entire sentence with only vowels, no consonants.