I always thought that the rule was if a word started with a consonant letter you used a, and if it started with a vowel letter you use an, so for instance;
A village (village starts with a consonant)
An estate (estate starts with a vowel)
I know consonant and vowel letters are assigned to the specific pronunciation of a sound, but what I sometimes see in text and writing is a word that starts with a consonant letter but has an before it, so i’m assuming that it is pronounced with a vowel sound. I came across the word Heka where in the text there was an before it, so I thought it was pronounced ‘ey-ka” or something similar; but when I looked up the pronunciation for it many pronounced it like “hey-ka.”
Is it because H is a softer sounding consonant? When I say “An He-ka” it doesn’t sound right.
Am I looking too far into this?
Is my grammar just bad? lmao
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Consectatrix
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- 10-02-2018 17:06
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- 10-02-2018 17:09
I would agree that 'an heka' doesn't sound right. To me, it seems like there's only one word that doesn't follow the rule out of millions of others. So, apart from that word, yes your grammar is correct and don't be calling it bad!
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- 10-02-2018 17:11
Maybe the "an" was a typo. Certainly it should be "a".
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Consectatrix
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- 10-02-2018 17:18
ok good, perhaps it was a typo, or an exception. It’s weird though, because I’ve seen more examples of that happening in texts i’ve been reading before.
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- 10-02-2018 17:47
(Original post by Consectatrix)
ok good, perhaps it was a typo, or an exception. It’s weird though, because I’ve seen more examples of that happening in texts i’ve been reading before.
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Updated: February 10, 2018
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