A or An?

[Nightmare85]

They ran for ___ long time.
*Hint: the If the noun starts with a vowel, it doesn't always mean it's going to be an.
Hope this helps,
dustin

I hope you didn't mean, "If the noun starts with the vowel a, it doesn't always mean it's going to be an".
Like:
An audience.
An auto dealer.
An avatar.
I guess you wanted to highlight the word vowel, not the a.
Of course you're right if you're talking about other vowels like e, o or u.

Check out my thread for more information:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/fr...-alphabet.html

Cheers!

[mehdihas]

Dear Tdol,
I chose "a" because the "j" sound takes "a" like in the word university. We say "a university" and not "an university".

[lichunsoe]

I firmly believe that this is A universal resource locator

[aggelos]

When selecting between 'a' and 'an' to put before a word, what counts is the sound that you hear first when you pronounce the word, not necessarily the first written letter of the word. So, say the word (aloud or in your mind) and decide if its first sound is a consonant sound or a vowel sound. If it's a consonant sound, put 'a'; if it's a vowel sound, put 'an'. And don't forget that there are some words in which the first letter you see is not pronounced.

As a little test, decide if you would put 'a' or 'an' before the following words:

book, evening, hour, honor, hat, union, URL, urn

I'll provide the correct answers in a new post, after some people (hopefully) have taken the test.

[KarelVarhanik]

When selecting between 'a' and 'an' to put before a word, what counts is the sound that you hear first when you pronounce the word, not necessarily the first written letter of the word. So, say the word (aloud or in your mind) and decide if its first sound is a consonant sound or a vowel sound. If it's a consonant sound, put 'a'; if it's a vowel sound, put 'an'. And don't forget that there are some words in which the first letter you see is not pronounced.

As a little test, decide if you would put 'a' or 'an' before the following words:

book, evening, hour, honor, hat, union, URL, urn

I'll provide the correct answers in a new post, after some people (hopefully) have taken the test.

Thanks for the test, aggelos. My solution:

a book, an evening, an hour, an honour (Do you prefer the US spelling?), a hat, a union, a URL, and an urn.

Kind regards,

KarelVarhanik

[Tdol]

Correct

[I LIKE ENGLISH]

An, it's u

[5jj]

An, it's u

/ən ɜːn/ /ə juːniən/ /ə juː ɑ:r el/

[nourline]

hallow how r u all:

I chose an, and I will explain my point of view in this excerpt:


Indefinite Articles in the English language to"a, an" - two tools are called indefinite articles

Added when the first letter of the name "a" is that: "an" and "a" - the
difference between the two instruments of indefinite articles

Added when the first letter of the name, character voice, but there are also some irregular words depends on the method according to pronounce the word. Such as:
an hour, a university, an honest

[5jj]

hallow how r u all:

Please use a smaller font.
Large fonts are quite difficult to read after a short time - and they make the posts spread out over a lot of space.

Thank you.