Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1.1 9/4/83; site scc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!pesnta!scc!steiny From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Re: Inappropriate Articles - (nf) Message-ID: <176@scc.UUCP> Date: Fri, 25-May-84 13:09:19 EDT Article-I.D.: scc.176 Posted: Fri May 25 13:09:19 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 05:50:20 EDT References: <278@wxlvax.UUCP> <36200136@uiucdcs.UUCP>, <522@ihuxt.UUCP> Organization: Santa Cruz Computer, Aptos, Calif. Lines: 67 *** The "h" sound is an unstable sound in all languages. In English, historically, it has come and gone away. The PRODUCTIVE rule in English is that if the noun begins with a vowel SOUND, then use the "an" form of the indefinate article. If the noun begins with a non-vowel SOUND (consenent or semi-vowel), then use the "a" form of the indefinate article. Thus, words like "honor" and "herb" are preceded by an "an" and words like "historical" and "hippy" are proceded by an "a". It is important to realize that written English is a code that we use to represent and record spoken English. Spoken language continually changes. There was a period of time in English when the primary socio-economic and primary literary dilect of English did not pronounce the h's at the beginning of words. This dilect is similar to the cockney dilect we are familiar with from "My Fair Lady." The speakers of the dialect followed the same rule that we do. The "a/an" rule was productive at that time. They pronounced "historical" - "istoikl". And they used the correct article "an". Most significantly, they WROTE DOWN WHAT THEY WERE DOING. Part of the reason that schoolmasters teach silly rules such as "the case of nouns must agree when using the copular verb" (it is I, not It's me), is because that is a rule in latin. Other examples, such as split infinitives, were mentioned in an excellent article by John Hobson. Teaching rules of Latin superimposed on English made total sense given the beliefs about the nature of language that have held until quite recently. Until the beginning of this century the commonly held assumption was that languages had been dengerating since Babel. The first language that we spoke was the best because it says so in the Bible. Scholars believed that if a relationship was found between languages then one must be a direct decendent of the other. This lead them to believe that latin decended from greek and the other European languages decended from latin. It was less bizarre to include English before the Norman Conquest because it was fully inflected and much more like Latin than it is today. Languages did not change in their view, they degenerated. This view did not just miraculously go away because some linguists gave a different explaination of what was happening. Today in English classes bizarre rules are taught to students as being rules of "English". The rule taught in normanative grammar classes and expoused in "grammar" books is that if the word begins with "h" use the second letter to select the article. In other words, it is taught as a spelling rule. It is a sound rule, it always has been and it always will be. This bizarre incongruity exists only because at an earlier point in English, the h's were not pronounced and it was written down that way. When lexographers and schoolteachers saw that it was written down that way they introduced a spelling rule to account for it. The assumption was that because it was older it was better. Now it is taught as dogma. Don Steiny Personetics 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382