Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Grammer Post 9

So i couldnt really think of anything that i really struggle with right now but maybe someone out there will feel that they never learned this and maybe they need to learn it. I hope that by reading this it may help someone in the blogging world.
A" goes before all words that begin with consonants.
a cat
a dog
a purple onion
a buffalo
a big apple
with one exception: Use an before unsounded h.
an honorable peace
an honest error
"An" goes before all words that begin with vowels:
an apricot
an egg
an Indian
an orbit
an uprising
with two exceptions: When u makes the same sound as the y in you, or o makes the same sound as w in won, then a is used.
a union
a united front
a unicorn
a used napkin
a U.S. ship
a one-legged man
Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter. If the first letter makes a vowel-type sound, you use "an"; if the first letter would makes a consonant-type sound, you use "a." So, if you consider the rule from a phonetic perspective, there aren't any exceptions. Since the 'h' hasn't any phonetic representation, no audible sound, in the first exception, the sound that follows the article is a vowel; consequently, 'an' is used. In the second exception, the word-initial 'y' sound (unicorn) is actually a glide [j] phonetically, which has consonantal properties; consequently, it is treated as a consonant, requiring 'a'.

2 comments:

  1. How's about typing! Don't forget to capitalize the "i" when referring to yourself. Also, I noticed you didn't use an apostrophy in "couldnt." That will also cost you points in a paper. Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Tycen!
    well i have been working on my goal which was to research 3 articles. I found some good and lots of not so good articles. But overall i found three that i think i can really use for my paper so thats good :) well there is my report to you!

    ReplyDelete