Yes that's what I was leaning towards. I had 'a' originally, but I was just reading through this morning and I suddenly thought, is that right? And after running over it a few times it started to look and sound completely meaningless! Cool, thanks guys [img]smile.gif[/img] . LOL it really is such a small thing, obviously my tutor isn't going be reading along and suddenly pull up when he sees an incorrect an ;) , but it was bugging me that I couldn't figure out what was right! If you say 'an unique' enough times it starts to sound okay!

Have you noticed some people say 'an historic' when they enunciate the h sound? I've heard a lot of newsreaders do that. It sounds weird, especially newsreaders because by virtue of being newsreaders they articulate each sound more clearly than just people speaking normally, so the /n/ and the /h/ don't sort of run into each other but are both 'hard' sounds. And yet you don't hear them saying for instance 'an human' or 'an hitman' or 'an hissing sound'.

Seraph, Vaskez, and Reeka are right. Which is why I think "an historic" only applies when you pronounce the "h" in historic.

In the US the way it works is as follows. "a hotel, a historic, etc." is used for words where the 'h' is asperated. However, for words where the 'h' is not asperated "an heir, an hour, etc." then 'an' is used.

"an historic" has to do with the (British?) pronunciation of historic as "iss tor ic".

[ 04-28-2003, 02:25 AM: Message edited by: Seraph ]

Yup, Vaskez and Reeka are right.... A dictionary will tell you the phonetic pronouciations....

But since you are doing a degree on this, you hardly need us mouthing about it :D

Boy, it's easy to get bogged down in the details...

My first choice would be to reword the sentence so I didn't have to deal with the awkward phrase. So I'd look at something like "Its unique contribution..."

The second reason I'd do that is it gets rid of the passive voice situation. I'm not particularly militant about it, but if you're dealing with someone who worries about whether it's "a unique" or "an unique", that will be the least of your worries.

Or third, you could flip it around: It contributed uniquely... Again, active voice instead of passive voice. You could try "It made a unique contribution..." but that doesn't get rid of the phrasing.

Ah well... rotsa ruck!

i thought that if you use vowels (A-E-I-O-U) then you make use of an then the rest A... ?? or am i wrong ?

My sister, my friend and I all say A, althogh it is prob'ly wrong, but Hey! it sounds right.
That's wot matters.

<font color=skyblue>English is not the only language that changes it's rules for the sound or flow of the sentence. In spanish, they use the letter "Y" to mean "and". Sometimes, depending on the need...the letter "E" is used instead. That makes the pronouncing of the sentence flow with more beauty and not so harsh sounding . </font>

LOL I'm not doing a degree in grammar, dear ;) . Psychology. Sadly though I have to use English to express myself [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Yes, Seraph, that's what I mean. An historic is fine when you pronounce it istoric, but it's becoming really common to say an historic when you pronounce the h which seems inconsistent.

Well Bungleau, that's probably good advice for some situations but I'm writing a report and reporting what the various variables contributed to predicting the criterion. That's the clearest way of expressing it.

Like I said, it doesn't really matter at all. It was just bugging me that both sounded right, and like dear Alex said, I'm a pedant ;)