In Articles^x, Consonants^x, Vowels^x

Hi Mathew,Yes, as Mister Micawber says, native English-speakers instinctively know which pronunciation of 'the' to use before a noun (or an adjective + noun), but I can see that it may be a problem for some people learning the language.As you have yourself noted, we generally use the...

The letters W and Y are semi-vowels. Though they are consonants, at times they behave like vowels as their sounds in certain words change into vowel sounds.The word "European" starts with the vowel "E" but has the consonantal "yea" sound .. Hence "an...

There are many rules, Arun-- it is a broad topic. Between a and an, however, their use depends on the initial sound of the following word: vowel sounds take 'an' and consonant sounds take 'a':an applea peachan umbrellaa ukulelean herb (AmE)a herb (BrE)

The rule with a and an is that you use a when the word that follows it starts with a consonant sound, and you use an when the word that follows it starts with a vowel sound. You probably knew that given you used an correctly in your sentence, but I thought I'd mention that for others who may...

General Canadian English is extremely similar to General American English. However, there are a number of differences between the two dialects. Firstly, GCE (General Canadian English) exhibits a linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically, the diphthong “ai”--as in "by" or "lie"--is...

8. Why do you say “She is a one-eyed teacher” and not “She’s an one eyed teacher”? (Focus on a phonetic explanation) The article an is used before vowel sounds, not vowel letters. The word one is pronounced wun. The w is not a vowel sound even though the o in o-n-e is a vowel. So a must be used...

Hi, I have one more question on No. 2, what would you do if the list contains a list of countable nouns with a mix of vowel initial sounds and consonant initial sounds and thus, engender a possible article consistency problem? Could I just put the article "a" in front of the word "planner" and...

Imagine a language in which: “The man hit the table with a stick” is “Copoloteko tipadela tisadure asutariki bu.” In this sentence co = a classifier indicating that we are talking about something animate polo = man te = a nominative case marker ko = the speaker wishes to emphasise the...

A and an signal that the noun modified is indefinite, referring to any member of a group. These indefinite articles are used with singular nouns when the noun is general; the corresponding indefinite quantity word some is used for plural general nouns. The rule is: a + singular noun...

Just passing by, pardon me for sticking my nose in, but... We say 'a history' but 'an historical'. Some people do. I'm not sure when it became trendy but I wish people would cut it out. I find it painful to hear. "An historical whatever" or "an hallucination" is only correct if...