A question of Grammar

Please can you explain to me why 'an' is used before the word Hotel when 'H' is not a vowel.

Thank you
Alex Penn

[hector51]

no,"hotel" comes with "a",not "an" as you thought

my 2 cents!

[svartnik]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Please can you explain to me why 'an' is used before the word Hotel when 'H' is not a vowel.
Thank you
Alex Penn

Because H is silent in some dialects
A/An hotel

[hector51]

I've search for "a hotel" and "an hotel" on google.and here is the result:
a hotel 6,000,000 hits
an hotel 600,000 hits

so both of them are commonly used,though "an hotel" sounds strange to me..

[sandhya.sha]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Please can you explain to me why 'an' is used before the word Hotel when 'H' is not a vowel.

Thank you
Alex Penn

You, as many of us, must have learned that 'an' is used before vowels. And, vowels in the English alphabet are a,e, i, o,u.

However, the use of 'an' has moe to do with pronunciation. The rule of English grammar is that 'an' is used before vowel sounds, not letters.

Based on this rule, when you say 'hotel', the letter 'h' is silent and the word is heard as 'otel'. So, the article used her is 'an'. Though the word 'hotel' doesn't start with a vowel letter, it starts with a vowel sound.

Similarly, the word 'university' starts with a vowel letter 'u'. But, when you pronounce the word, the starting sound is like 'you-niversity'.The sound is 'y' which is not a vowel sound, but a consonant. So, in this case you will use the article 'a'. 'A University'.

[Hamburg]

Hotel is always preceded with 'a' and not 'an'.
You may well hear "an 'otel", "an 'orrible day" or "an 'urricane" in the far southern reaches of the UK, but this is purely dialectual and not correct. In the same dialect the use of 'th' mysteriously vanishes at the end of words, only to be replaced by 'v', e.g. "I'm going out wiv my friends" instead of "I'm going out with my friends".
It's all Mary Poppins stuff.