Do you say 'AN article' or 'A article'?

[@WayneKitching]

The title almost gave me a hard attack!

[@mahiainti678]

good one

[@revangerang]

luh-mow (lmao)

[@atticstattic]

same!

[@felixmoore6781]

Me too, but thankfully I maintain a strong form.

[@VivekPatel-ze6jy]

​@@revangerangEluhmaiyoh

[@van-hieuvo8208]

Etymologically, it wasn't so much that the indefinite article gained an "n" before a vowel, but that it lost that "n" before a consonant. "An" was a merely weak form of "one", even though it ultimately developed its own strong form. The "n" only persisted before a vowel to block hiatus. Other words like "an" include "mine" and "thine", which also lost the "n" before a consonant, but unlike "an", they came to end in a consonant, and therefore didn't need "n" to block hiatus before a vowel either, which resulted in "my apple" and "thy eye" instead of "mine apple" and "thine eye". The strong pronunciation of "a", which ends in a consonant, kinda leans into that direction as well, so I think "a apple" is just as reasonable as "my apple."

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Yes, this got cut from the edit. This video started at 20 minutes, which seemed too long for the subject matter

[@bletwort2920]

Yeah but people can no longer make that connection

[@angreagach]

There is a hilarious example of the use of a strong "a" in an episode of the old comedy series "The Honeymooners," where Art Carney and Jackie Gleason use it, saying, "can it core a apple?"

[@sunwukong6897]

I imagine that the form of OE “ān” acting as an article developed weakly was because it acted proclitically, i.e. was unstressed and phonetically belonged to the segment of whatever word it modified.

[@jergarmar]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I must admit, the concept of a Lindsey video being "too long" is an unfamiliar concept to me, heh.

[@DeadStuffGuy]

I am always impressed with the breadth of sources you use for you examples, it also makes it extra fun when I recognize someone

[@zarzee8925]

Same here! They're usually talking about something interesting, too.

[@Helium0003]

Same here as well! Of all things, I recognized 3:17 as Bozeman science from my high school chemistry class 3 years ago now (although the clip used here is I think from an environmental science video).

[@MissingRaptor]

Or a niche KZbinr that you follow 💖

[@Thecognoscenti_1]

My favourite example of incorrect a/an usage is when Jeremy Clarkson deliberately uses the wrong form to draw attention to the object being emphasised ("an cow", "an horse", "an van", "a egg")

[@MaoRatto]

It razors and too hard to say. I notice that when I speak. Most words with n or m. If there is an N like in End. It is nasalized.

[@OrangeC7]

That tends to play in an interesting way with how sometimes you will see "an" used for words that start with (a non-silent) "h", like "an historic", which I remember noticing a lot when I watched Star Trek: Voyager as a kid.

[@jonadabtheunsightly]

Deliberately doing it to call attention, is very different from the natural progression of the language that this video was meant to be discussing, though.

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@OrangeC7 Some people seem to do that with the word "historic" and exactly no other words.

[@AndrewBlucher]

Apparently some people like that Clarkson is deliberately incorrect. Others don't, which is why he was booted from the Beeb. As for me, I think he's a piece of excrement.

[@EnviedShadow]

This channel makes me so self-conscious about how I talk. I love it.

[@diegoreckholder945]

since English is my second language (Spanish is my first), he makes me realize how different.my accent is from my customers, and to realize the sounds they make when speaking 😄 such an interesting exercise for my everyday job

[@skyworm8006]

You shouldn't interpret it as a criticism. It's only descriptive.

[@rickyspanish4792]

I'll oh fit

[@slavecek]

@@skyworm8006 If anything, Dr Geoff has previously gone out of his way to contradict certain claims that speaking in a particular way is "wrong".

[@thevector]

Me at the start a Dr. Lindsey video: "Interesting pronunciation variation. I always use variant A." At the end: "I no longer know how I pronounce anything. I possibly don't even speak English." It's a lot of fun, if a bit befuddling.

[@JaneAustenAteMyCat]

🤣

[@christianb9077]

Again very entertaining and enlightening. And this time without a dubious sponsor. So let me compensate you a little bit for that. 👍

[@Naegimaggu]

14:46 This might also be because of the way the template is programmed. The string might simply be "Purchase a {thing_to_be_purchased} on official {vendor_platform_name}" which is much easier and begets less questions from the person reviewing your pull request than writing: article = "an" if thing_to_be_purchased[0] in 'AEIOUaeiou' else "a" message = f"Purchase {article} {thing_to_be_purchased} on official {vendor_platform_name}"

[@illchangemyfriend]

I thought so too! Interesting to see it expressed in programming language, thanks for taking the time :)

[@rayden54]

Especially since it's "sounds-like AEIOU" not "spelled-like." /shudder.

[@notwithouttext]

also reminds me of how i always see "1 results found" and "1 items selected"

[@kristianwalsh1189]

I know you wrote that code example off the top of your head, but it almost exactly matches I what used to use as the "bad" example when I trained developers in software internationalisation. (I'm also unsurprised that you got 29 upvotes). The two big problems are that it only works for English (how would this handle noun case and gender?). The second problem is that it doesn't work. The English rule is based on pronunciation not spelling, your sample would produce "an user" and (on topic for this video) “a honoured guest”. Again, I accept you'd do a better job if you thought about it more, but the path you're going down is wrong, and you can get very deep into the weeds before that becomes clear... The correct way to deal with this is for "{thing to be purchased}" to include its article - the bug here was a lazy attempt to re-use a string, because "it's the same word" (worse: it's probably the "Description" field from a database entry). Rewording to avoid the article is the least-effort way to get a correct result in English: “Purchase your {thing_to_be_purchased} on official {...", but even that will create a problem in languages that inflect adjectives for gender or that change nouns depending on grammatical case ("your" becomes ”Ihr” or “Ihre” in German, depending on gender of {thing_to_be_purchased} and Slavic languages would need different forms of {thing_to_be_purchased} depending on its role in the various sentences it was being inserted into).

[@theonewithoutidentity]

@@kristianwalsh1189 That is true, you would actually need a map/database lookup that matches articles with common english words. Which would be a nightmarish complication just so you get the correct article into an email template.

[@borealmarinda4337]

I looked up "extreme marshmallow cannon" after hearing the example of Obama saying that to know the context, and the first link I found had "a extreme marshmallow cannon" written down. An immediate example of written form example of this development.

[@cassinipanini]

what was the context?

[@horsymandias-ur]

There was no context; Obama said it and dropped the mic and left

[@borealmarinda4337]

@@cassinipanini He was at a demonstration of an extreme marshmallow cannon. It's a cannon that shoots marshmallows.

[@dimm__]

@@borealmarinda4337 extremely?

[@rockstar-technology]

> At today’s White House Science Fair, President Obama got the chance to shoot a marshmallow across the State Dining Room using 14-year-old inventor Joey Hudy’s “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” Hudy designed and built the machine, which can launch the fluffy white confections up to 175 feet away using pressurized air.

[@jBM7420]

As a Bangladeshi living in South Africa, that one section of the video felt as if it was calling me out.

[@slyar]

Which?

[@RodrigoTheHappyDog]

7:27 I presume

[@GenericUsername1388]

I’m also from SA. The accents he used were just very Afrikaans ones. Most native English speakers will pronounce their ans normally

[@Parrot5884]

​@@GenericUsername1388 Also South African, and I know many native English speaking South Africans who don't use "an" consistently. Its not everyone, but there are certainly pockets of English South Africans who use "a" instead of "an", it really depends on where you are. My parents grew up in different areas, and my dad's side of the family is partial to "a" while my mom's is partial to "an".

[@justayoutubeaccountman]

Many people from the Western Cape speak both English and Afrikaans at home, which complicates things! I'm from a mixed language family too, although I am partial to English.

[@IHTACast]

I love your channel so much. You’ve quantified observations I’ve noted to myself I thought nobody else even noticed. However the more I watch your channel the more I hear people instead of listening to them LOL

[@Sinthoras155]

14:00 Imagine being Dr Lindsey, always on the lookout for linguistic anomalies. Even if you just want to create a Discord Server, you have to be on the lookout

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

Being linguistically aware is a blessing and a curse.

[@Sinthoras155]

@@amadeosendiulo2137 ain't no way it's ア from reddit

[@_oaktree_]

I'm a native speaker of American English. I remember being taught that "a" was correct only before a consonant, and that "an" had to be used before a vowel - anything else was incorrect. I still instinctively feel that way, even though I know that this is prescriptivism and therefore A Great Evil In Our Time ;) but now having watched this video I also realize that this "error" is far more widespread that I ever noticed, and in much more varied and interesting ways! And I also realized that I am not at all consistent with how I say the word "to" and "the" before a word beginning with a vowel or a consonant. Despite my somewhat prescriptivist tendencies, I too am liable to some of these inconsistencies - a real hypocrite! This was a great watch, thank you... a good reminder that language is truly always changing, and always in different ways than one might think.

Also keep in mind that going far enough back, there used to always be an 'n', so it was something like 'an ball'. Dropping the 'n' before consonants was a mistake at some point, but became standard. (See how German still has the 'n' in words like 'ein'.) Language evolves.

[@swagmundfreud666]

I'm going the opposite I've noticed and drop the vowel in "an", so "another" sound like "nother", "an adult" sounds like "nadult"

[@Purwapada]

taught same way in uk too

[@simonbramwell4074]

I enjoyed your example of the 8 muffins. It reminds me of an English work colleague (educated at Gordonstoun) who told me how he'd caused a problem at a bar in the Netherlands when asking for a beer. The barman started pouring lots of beers. When he was asked "what are you doing?", the barman replied "you asked for eleven beers! I thought you had friends coming to join you!". It turns out the the phrase in Dutch "Elf bier(en)" (11 beers) sounds exactly like the English spoken phrase "I'll have a beer" (elluvabeer).

Haha. That's part of why it's often useful to include a bit of small talk and chit chat and other filler first, so your audience can calibrate to your dialect / language.

[@Vinemaple]

When I worked on a US Navy fleet support oiler, I once got kicked off the sound-powered phone during an UNREP with a Royal Navy customer, because the customer's phone talker had a strong Yorkshire accent. I was familiar with Yorkshire accents, maybe just enough to get myself in trouble... I thought I could understand his accent just fine, and didn't bother using the official terminology. If I myself had used "commence" and "cease" instead of "start" and "stop," there wouldn't have been a problem. During transfer, the RN phone talker was told to tell us to "start pumping." He did. Since we were already pumping, I assumed he'd said "stop pumping." You see, I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I have the cot/caught merger. He was from somewhere in the North of England. All his final consonants were glottal stops. _"stop" and "start" sounded exactly the same to us over a sound-powered phone connection,_ especially with machinery and wave noise in the background. So when I relayed "stop pumping" to my rig captain, it set loose a comedy of embarrassments that resulted in a full rig shutdown, my rig captain and the CPO on the Royal Navy ship taking over the sound-powered phone and having a long direct conversation, then with me getting put back on line-handling duty and never trusted on the sound-powered phone again. It doesn't _sound_ like it was my fault, but if I'd followed procedure, the miscommunication would have been obvious, the moment it happened.

@@Vinemaple Hurrah for procedure and bureaucracy!

[@Vinemaple]

Meh, I don't think any bureaucracy was involved in this procedure, just other people making similar mistakes to me, probably with more disastrous results. Although MSFSC was full of "can't have nice things" policies thanks to one really stupid, lazy, or impulsive mariner getting themselves or someone else killed, or humiliating the company

@@Vinemaple In this case it was just procedure. But in general, bureaucracy and filling out forms fulfill similar functions in the rest of society.

[@thatotherted]

Ah yes, Oscar winner Anne Icon. I do like her work.

[@revangerang]

omg 🤣

[@efflux89]

HA!

[@pauldavisthefirst]

Her sister, Ann Athaway, has done some good work also, though it's hard to tell them apart.

[@Paul71H]

6:03 I've noticed this a lot over the past few years, where younger KZbinrs avoid using weak forms. My son watches one particular LEGO KZbinr who almost always pronounces "the" as THEE, and "a" as AY. I suspect that these KZbinrs talk this way in an attempt to sound more formal or intelligent, but that's not how they sound to me. To me, this weak form avoidance makes them sound robotic. In fact, this speech pattern reminds me of an elementary school student reading aloud in class, and doing it badly -- having to slow down and read one word at a time. So this speech pattern gives me the impression that the speaker is reading (poorly) from a script that he's not familiar with.

[@ServantOfPuppets]

I agree, but I also think another thing can contribute: I know I'm guilty of this when giving presentations. I think it's sort of a hypercorrection in order to avoid saying um and uh at all costs.

[@tigerofdoom]

@@Paul71H I imagine it's also to help the automatic transcription work more cleanly, which plays into the algorithm

[@micayahritchie7158]

I don't think it's to come off as intelligent but rather energetic and clear even if it's a bit stilted

[@qj0n]

I believe big part of the strengthening of weak forms is due to foreign speakers, who don't have weak forms in their language and were never taught to use or hear them. Creators, who want to make content accessible for them may avoid such forms This is also something I observed in international corporations I worked in. As a Pole I have always been taught British English. I got to C1 level and I had never issues when talking to English or Americans, but when I started to have meetings with Israeli, Spanish or Dutch I had to intentionally stop using perfect tenses, more complex grammar forms and pronounce everything strongly

[@chriswalker2753]

Not just KZbin. Amol Rajan, Cambridge-educated BBC presenter (Radio 4 Today, University Challenge) seems to use the strong form "AY" for most of his indefinite articles. I find it rather irritating, though I know I shouldn't.

[@stevieinselby]

I like the fact that we have _the_ definite article because there's just the one, but we have _an_ indefinite article because there are two of them!

[@terdragontra8900]

that is delightful!

[@selmiespot]

i always learn so much watching your videos! the bit about the two "the" forms was eye opening, i had always thought the stressed form was only ever used for emphasis, but it turns out i use it all the time before vowels!

[@RaytheonTechnologies_Official]

0:18 "Allomorphs" was actually my favourite early 90s Saturday morning action cartoon

[@robertray2714]

The convention of using "an" before "historic" bugs me to no end. I'm a linguistic prescriptivist for this and this only.

[@cdub42]

I'm so happy to have found another!!!

[@michaelimbesi2314]

Well, it does actually make sense for people whose speak with an accent where h-dropping is common. Those of us who don’t speak that way find it very strange to do so, because the h sound we have is a consonant. But if your accent pronounces historic more like ‘istoric, then saying “an” is entirely correct for the way you speak.

[@cdub42]

@@michaelimbesi2314 that's the thing though. Due to some weird quirk that has somehow become entrenched, "an historic" with a fully aspirated h sound is not only accepted, but seems to be preferred in hoity toity circles. It's ridiculous.

@@cdub42 Almost all of English spelling is ridiculous. (I wouldn't blame pronunciation. That's just what it is. But the mapping to spelling to crazy!)

[@cdub42]

English orthography is indeed absurd, but that's not the same as phonetics. But in the case of "an historic", people cleave to a cultural perception that it's a correct form, probably from the era when they said you can't end sentences with prepositions, thereby eschewing the much more natural phonetic pattern of alternating vowels and consonants.

[@srmjo]

I'm glad you have touched on the use of "thuh" + glottal stop rather than "thee" + y before a noun starting with a vowel. I first became aware of it, in American speakers, a decade or so ago, and in the intervening time it seems (to me) to have spread like wildfire. We can now hear plenty of younger people in England, even BBC reporters, saying "thuh earth" and "thuh architect". Interesting that you situate this phenomenon as part of an increasing tendency of hard attack. 🙏

[@the_latinist]

It’s become so prevalent that my mother (60) ‘corrected’ me for saying ‘thee end’ when reading to my daughter.

[@ayebraine]

I think it feels more deliberate and modern, "like a presenter would say it", maybe because it sounds clipped and purposeful.

[@ReidMerrill]

That's an cool observation

[@arminhaberl9242]

Love it, love it, love it 😅

[@haru-chan8762]

Thats an ool observation

[@theevilcottonball]

I am a german who watched quite a vit of top gear back in the days. Clarkson is one of the people who sometimes uses a instead of an and vice versa. Sometimes though its just for emphasis.

[@theevilcottonball]

Actually why is it spelt 'another' and not 'an other'. The funny thing is, if it was spelt 'an other' I would pronounce it with hard attack. 'an?other'

[@Doorisessa]

"About 30 years ago" Oh, the seventies. "Back in the nineties" O.o

[@frogstronaut1220]

I've actually noticed myself doing this before! I really love seeing modern day sound/language changes, and it feels cool to actively be a part of one.

[@NickHoad]

How do you manage to find such a large and diverse collection of clips of people exhibiting these details of speech you’re highlighting?

[@hbowman108]

I would guess that they're searching with Youglish.

[@TransNeingerian]

He finds a clip that has something interesting to make a video about first.

[@litigioussociety4249]

I've always been curious how he finds them too. He also is probably able to train himself to spot these things, because I would definitely miss them most of the time, even if I was looking for them. Vocal fry is about the only thing I can notice more, if I try.

[@tigrafale4610]

Might be searching transcripts of lots of videos.

[@megatheinternet]

Could be as simple as he's a pro at languages so he knows what accents and dialects have the qualities he's highlighting. All he's gotta do is pull up videos of people from those areas and there's likely tons of examples for what he's talking about.

[@gustavovillegas5909]

Starting off my day watching one of your videos at a cafe is the perfect morning, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, good sir!

[@Frahamen]

Hard Attack is just a great name for a band and after checking spotify, it sure is.

[@teagancombest6049]

I mean there's Massive Attack which is already better.

[@baronmeduse]

I always find it amusing how French makes a big deal about inserting letters to avoid vowel clashes and then has things like 'en haut' (where the 'n' isn't even pronounced, or the h which is a vowel sound).

[@CM-ss5pe]

This is probably because the vowel nasalisation process took place before 'h' went silent, which would explain why other "en h-" expressions (e.g. "en huit", "en heure") also have the hiatus just like "en haut" does. The letter 'h' in French is generally weird. It's silent, but it affects other sounds around it as if it weren't silent.

[@hbowman108]

@@CM-ss5pe le hockey, but l'hôpital.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I think French is designed to defeat all of us. I love it.

[@hbowman108]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I've noticed that US and Canadian French "errors" are sometimes RIGHT in Canada. Learning French I was expecting names to be pronounced the way CBC news and hockey announcers pronounced them, and they weren't. I've heard French people were amused by the cartoon "au pays des têtes à claques" because of the over-the-top accents of the characters.

[@gugusalpha2411]

@@CM-ss5pe A hiatus in "en haut"? There's none in my accent at least. We just glide from a vowel to another without even a glottal stop to separate them.

[@Stephh99]

These videos are so interesting! I actually got excited when I saw this was posted and dropped what I was doing to watch it

[@williamevans9426]

As long as you didn't drop an aitch, I remain perfectly 'appy.

[@glenmorrison8080]

Love that Dr. Lindsey played a big ol' chunk of JJ's point about the upcoming election. A Brit helping deliver a Canadian message to Americans about our election. That is a amazing thing to see.

[@eboomer]

it's like a international intervention 😂

[@sharonminsuk]

Having watched this just before going to sleep last night, and sleepy, I no longer remember what's the "JJ" that you and others have mentioned. But I did notice right off the bat, that he started with a clip from Trump, and then proceeded to use the example "a moron, vs an idiot", several times in a row. Brilliant! I was beside myself with glee! (So... who or what is JJ?)

[@deyfuck]

@@sharonminsuk JJ is a Canadian KZbinr who believes that Britain civilised the Irish, gifted them the English language, and is their rightful owner. His political commentary is abhorrent, even if he happens to be on the right side this time against Trump.

[@argmax110]

@@sharonminsuk JJM is a Canadian who makes videos for Americans where he plays up American stereotypes about Canadians. Notice him saying "aboot" and the random assortment of identifiably (to an American) Canadian paraphernalia he surrounds himself with.

[@ChrisNahrgang]

Once again, Geoff has made me acutely aware of a difference in speech patterns that I was blissfully unaware of, and will now be thinking of whenever I'm speaking. Thanks. 😂

[@jaapsch2]

The repair “a, um, an …” is interesting (10:40). I do that, but find that with the definite article I use the “thee” pronunciation often when there is a slight pause in production, and then don’t repair. It irritates me when I record my videos, but I can’t help myself from saying it so often.

[@HenryLoenwind]

That's probably because you can stretch the ee into the pause, while stretching a schwa goes a good bit against its nature.

[@ericaceous1652]

Think the choice of example nouns in this video was not accidental, following that first video clip 😄

[@columbus8myhw]

And the JJ McCullough clip at 12:09

[@josepheridu3322]

Yep, very obvious the bias. But I forgive him, as I forgive all boomers for fucking up us all... which is why more people now vote Trump in the first place. Strong and honest people are either explicit about their ideas, or remain completely neutral. Nietzsche was right: Resentful, weak people are too coward to be direct, so they live in a space of plausible denial; yet they are also too resentful, angry and hateful to totally shut up... so they add sneaky shame and indirect attacks on issues they believe they have some expertise... and they actually believe they are smart for that.

[@mytube001]

Same for the colors...

[@mrosskne]

lol obsessed

[@atomicmrpelly]

​@@mrosskne"obsessed", coming from the side that is still regularly talking about the guy who dropped out of the race weeks ago.

[@elkieenglish]

This is a brilliant video, I love going deep into details of a language and especially pronunciation, thank you!

[@lukehillman]

As one of your devoted American viewers, I so appreciate you including the full clip at 12:10. Cheers!

[@silpheedTandy]

i want to say, Geoff, that i'm always so impressed with the editing of your videos. they very much help my brain to process and to notice the ideas you're speaking about. (give every single person in your undoubtedly massive editing team a high-five!! ;) )

[@fwiffo]

In our English classes in elementary school we learned the "an before a vowel" rule, but I suddenly noticed an exception. Some words starting with "un". We don't say "an universe" or "an unicorn". When I asked about it, my teacher basically said "well, English is full of of exceptions, it sounds awkward to use 'an' there." Later I realized that "unicorn" doesn't start with with a vowel - we pronounce it as "yunicorn". Contrast that with a word like "underpass", for which we use "an". Now I'm hungry for English muffins.

[@sluggo206]

My teacher explained that "long u" is nominally a vowel but begins with a consonant sound. That got us students to try the opposite with "short u". The first word we could think of was "umbrella", so that became our example of jokingly saying "a?umbrella".

[@atreidesson]

It's so obvious I understood it as a Russian at like 15, how could the teacher have managed to dodge it? 😅

[@Seánybruv]

No no no. It's not an exception. The rule is an before a vowel SOUND not a vowel letter. So it's a European man, not an European man. Or like you said a universe not an universe. Because these words start with a Y sound. Y is a consonant. The contrast would be the word ylang-ylang, which starts with an e vowel sound. So an ylang-ylang flower. I don't understand how this is hard to grasp.

[@enricobianchi4499]

​@@atreidesson It's easy if you're Russian because there's a visible difference between the letters у and ю. Imagine if you just used the same letter for both :) Growing up an Anglo must be horrible

[@atreidesson]

@enricobianchi4499 wait, where's у used as two sounds in Russian? I think it isn't, while ю takes the exact same role as u does, as they can both be with or without the [j] sound.

[@thequantaleaper]

For singers, the distinction between "Thuh" and "Thee" is learned early on. It helps with the flow (as expected) and keeps everyone on the same page.

[@RubyRedDances]

I've found the I introduction of a+a word starting with a vowel to feel extremely auditorily uncomfortable. I always presumed the use of "an" like the liaison of French and it totally made sense to me.

[@iykury]

yeah, it feels unnatural to me because i don't think it's something that really happens in my speech. i feel like it could jump out at me and distract a little from what someone's saying because i'm not used to hearing it, though then again, i can't remember a specific time that i've heard it, so maybe not.

[@GBGinmyheart]

Fantastic captions! Just found this channel and really helpful the captions get first order treatment. Super interesting video as well!

[@unknowndeoxys00]

So it's a linguistic phenomenon. I would usually associate it with script glitches in games or other software, or even by way of the software's design because who had the time to worry about grammar when coding. For example, a game I loved on Nintendo's Gameboy Advance involved a little baking section, and the concluding message for any successful bake was, "You made a ___ ___." To read "You made a Sugar Cookies" and "You made a Apple Strudel" was one of my favorite useless things to giggle at.

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

The Bananas has gone bad.

[@cozykotatsu]

I love this channel so much😭💖

[@alicec1533]

Same! Always excited to see a new video... there's just a wealth of stuff that I likely hear all the time, or say myself all the time but never _notice_ until Geoff Lindsey makes a video about it.

[@MenelionFR]

This is a… u-hm… an interesting video, Dr. Lindsey! English is not my mother tongue, but I always repair when I hesitate, just because a hiatus sounds wrong to me here.

[@frohnatur9806]

An interesting phenomenon that you almost touched on, is what I would describe in short as a rigid adherence to rules in written language, specifically in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (which I absolutely love, but this feature bugged me). Martin would always fit the indefinite article to the starting letter of the corresponding noun, even in cases when the immediately following letter (at the start of an adjective) would prompt the opposite form. For example, how he would write it: an green apple a unripe pear an unripe apple a green pear Since these two forms - as you explained in the video - exist to resolve hiatus (didn't know that term before) in spoken language, I'm used to fitting the indefinite article not necessarily to the noun, but to whatever sound follows, meaning I'd agree with the latter two of my fruity examples of Martin's writing style, but not the former. This somewhat breaks the flow of reading for me, and I wonder: Are rules like this taught in schools in some regions?

[@HenryLoenwind]

Interesting. So he writes with a German accent... ;) I have no idea where this comes from for native speakers. It is something speakers whose native language has case or gender endings on its articles do. German: ein grüner Apfel (a green apple, male) eine grüne Bohne (a green bean, female) ein grünes Kleid (a green dress, neuter)

[@nostalgiakitty2057]

Whenever Dr Lindsey brings up South Africa, it's always bringing up the old Afrikaans accent which is really mostly spoken by people in their late 40s and older, finding a person with that type of accents under 45 is extremely rare. Afrikaans has very little influence on most people's accent under the age of 45. Even younger native Afrikaans speakers tend to drop their afrikaanism when speaking English

[@sean_nel]

I used to think the same, but in Pretoria I meet many younger Afrikaans people who still speak that way.

[@nostalgiakitty2057]

@sean_nel yeah under 45 with a similar accent there's a 99% chance that person is from Pretoria

[@JHaven-lg7lj]

Brilliant, so glad I found your channel. Thanks for the assist on this stressful day.

[@Fitzwewels]

I actually said it aloud, and as an Virginian American, I never say ‘Obama Administration’, I only say: ‘Obama Idministration’! They sort of blend into one continuous word. I never say administration on its own that way.

[@mariokarter13]

I was unsure about the a/an thing for a long time, but the explanation that made the most sense to me is "use 'an' when the following word starts with a vowel sound." If you put emphasis on the H, "a historical," if you don't, "an historical."

[@JordynPi]

Funny how "hiatus" itself contains a hiatus

[@insectoid_creature]

not quite i don't think. it's pronounced hayeytus

[@angreagach]

That depends on the dialect. In this case, the second element of the i actually acts as a consonantal y in most dialects!

[@BryanLu0]

It's autological!

[@angeldude101]

No it doesn't, at least not in my accent. There's definitely a glide between the two adjacent vowel letters, except not really because the glide is fully contained with the phoneme of the first vowel letters. /hajɛjtəs/

[@hbowman108]

@@angeldude101 I have [hajejɾəs] but some speakers have PRICE leveling, in southern and African-American accents and so have no glide in the PRICE vowel.

[@AProperNoun]

Hmmmm, feels like Dr. Lindsey has another, subtler message in this video... (Loved the video!)

[@cdub42]

While certain people are whinging about the JJ clip, I preferred the bit at 2:17 lol. Like he straight up preempted them and they still came out of the woodwork.

[@rosehipowl]

Is there any historical evidence for Old English (and English a bit further along) having hard attack? Because it's quite common in German, is it one of the things that English originally had but we "lost" or is it something that evolved in German long after English already had our own way of doing things?

[@keegster7167]

I wonder about that too. Elision in Latin seems to indicate that there wasn't hard attack there at least. I wonder if poetic meter could tell you something similar about Old English. But then again, this could differ by register too.

[@danielwalter1467]

@@keegster7167 One hint *might* be found in the rules for germanic alliterative poetry: I think if the stressed syllable of a word begins with a vowel, they are always counted as beginning with the same consonat regardless of the vowel quality of the syllable or the consonant that ends the preceding syllable.. This *could* possibly indicate that at least in many styles of poetry, the alliterating syllables were spoken with hard attack🤔

[@dflynn]

Great video as always, thanks! I suppose my compatriot JJ McCullough's strategy is an extension of the word-internal pattern: algebra-ist, Juda(h)-ism, Mishna(h)-ic, Volta-ic, Inca-ic, etc. Prevocalic is also [i] on occasion: karaoke; Ishmael; Hansa > Hanseatic; Mt. Ida > Idæan. I wonder whether anyone pronounces the article 'a' as [i] prevocalically...

[@Naegimaggu]

0:46 Very fitting choice of example words to match the example speaker in the beginning.

[@venus_de_lmao]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that

[@Doomsman-VII]

Indeed...

[@Woodsaras]

What do you know? Based on what? Keep your illinformed fkng political opinions to yourself, you fkng moron.

[@champagnejane5126]

It's so cool to see language evolve in real time. One of my favourite parts of being alive

[@efflux89]

My dad is THAT old black man who will correct you when talking because you can't sound "uneducated" as a black person.🤦🏾‍♂Hearing other black people use "a African American" would make his head explode.

[@teagancombest6049]

Ask your dad who decides what is "proper" speech? Is there a committee?

[@acepokemontrainer1]

the amount of research to find all these clips as examples is impressive!

[@mack.attack]

I wonder if this occurs more in Hawai'i with how prevalent glottal stops are in Hawaiian words like Hawai'i, 'a'a, ka'a'awa etc

[@petermsiegel573]

Well, local people (locals) in Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin for the most part, rather than Hawaiian (which is typically learned as a second language in immersion classes). In Pidgin, wan (

[@mack.attack]

​​@@petermsiegel573 Fascinating! Thanks for the information :)

[@Vinemaple]

Yet a other highly informative video that clears up several misconceptions! I do want to continue dialogue, though, on the assertion that American speakers will _drop_ certain vowels to avoid hiatus. If you listen closely, you'll notice that these speakers don't drop the vowel, they _shorten_ it, and rush through the hiatus as quick as possible. I wonder whether Shakespeare did the same, or if his speech really dropped the vowels he replaced with apostrophes to fit the meter, and how much that was actually done in conversational speech in his day. On the other hand, most of the hesitations from 11:30 through 12:14 contain glottal stops despite the pauses and verbal gestures. Interesting to note that in these cases, the speakers continue to feel that at least a faint glottal stop is necessary! It's also worth pointing out that some "assertiveness" training discourages one from _ever_ using verbal gestures like "um" and backtracking, which causes speakers who try to follow those theories to exhibit some strange speech behavior that isn't natural for them. Speaking of glottal stops, I hope you didn't intend to convey that the use of hard attack to emphasize a word is a new phenomenon. I, at least, have been hearing and using this technique as far back as 1983. I also wanted to point out that in some older New York accents like my father's, a /j/ glide is used instead of a glottal stop, as in, "Uh _yint'resting_ development."

[@MikeOfKorea]

I enjoyed that sneaky bit.

[@josepheridu3322]

Strong and honest people are either explicit about their ideas, or remain completely neutral. Nietzsche was right: Resentful, weak people are too coward to be direct, so they live in a space of plausible denial; yet they are also too resentful, angry and hateful to totally shut up about areas outside of their expertise.

[@MikeOfKorea]

@@josepheridu3322 Oh. Well, I found it clever.

[@apt_amoeba5198]

​@@josepheridu3322I think implying that "all indirect or implied claims are the result of someone being weak" is a completely foolish interpretation of Nietzsche's quote. It's an apt quote for someone overly coy who doesn't afford themselves the courage to speak their beliefs, but I don't think an instance of sneaking a cheeky dig in is an apt application for it, lol

[@cdub42]

​@@josepheridu33222:17 is just for you

[@phdtobe]

Thank you, sir! I’ve been hearing the hard attack among younger KZbinrs for over a decade, and it has been driving me crazy!

[@m9mykolkaaa]

This made me think what the word "another" is, is it just "an other" merged together?! wow

[@chrisjohnston3512]

My Canadian English seems to be very hiatus-friendly in comparison, but I haven't lost the n in my indefinite articles yet. Strangely my "do" doesn't seem to have a weak form the way my "to" does. That really stood out to me watching this video.

[@otherperson]

Man, people really have to think carefully before they choose what to call African Americans, huh? Lol half the pauses seemed to be people thinking of a more appropriate word than "black" or something. Black people are okay with black yall lol dont worry. And lots of black people in the US aren't African-American anyway so it's usually more apt.

[@eboomer]

And these days in some circles you are supposed to say "BIPOC" in order to include some additional people of color but exclude others... 🙄 Meanwhile the rest of us can just be called "white" and there's definitely no issue with that, is there?

[@dothedo3667]

I use "an", though I'm sure with pauses there are times were I don't go back and correct "a". But mostly when discussions about "an" come about, I recall my 4th grade teacher emphasizing "an" in a really annoying way. Always like the name Anne, a whiny "aaaaan", and I just thought it was so stupid because no one says it that way when speaking. Unless I'm trying to specify that it's singular without saying "one", I'm never going to say "aaaan", it's going to be "uhn/en/ən".

[@roedagardet]

A video that prominently features the word "subpoena" right before that is Wiktionary's word of the day!

[@chrisperyagh]

I'm glad you brought this up as I'm hearing this ALL THE BLOODY TIME here and it makes my piss boil! It's pretty simple - any word starting with a vowel sound uses 'an' and any word starting with a consonantal sound uses 'a'.

[@quiddityocean]

Thank you for mentionning vowel and consonantal sounds. I’m French and I learned English at school when I was eleven. The teatchers of the 10 years following yers all said vowels and consonants plus a list of exceptions like hours, yoyo or European. When I studied English in University, a professor used vowel and consonantal /sounds/ and it made so much sense : no exceptions to learn, just the "proper" pronounciation for words. Though I still make mistakes while speaking and writting English (I can blame autocorrect sometimes) I teach English in a community center and as a private tutor, and making sure my students change their mind from letters to sounds makes a lot of difference for them to better understand and practice better English.

[@chrisperyagh]

@@quiddityocean As English isn't your main language, allowances are made for these sort of things. But for native English speakers where English is their mother tongue, it's inexcusable as there shouldn't be such errors being made and going uncorrected. I hear television and radio presenters and KZbinrs making these mistakes and just carrying on regardless. Even a KZbinr who is meant to be an English teacher is using the wrong indefinite article whenever she says "A R.P. accent" when she should be saying "AN R.P. accent" as the letter R begins with a consonantal sound. If she was to say "A Received Pronunciation accent" in full instead of abbreviated to 'R.P.', then that would be correct.

[@quiddityocean]

@@chrisperyagh You are right, ot’s quite annoying when people make grammar mistakes in their native language (as a teacher, it’s always a little embarrassing when a student quotes a native speaker that contradicts the rules I try to have them follow.) But truth be told, as a linguist, I know that languages evolve constantly and today’s mistakes are tomorrow’s norm, just as today’s norm was yesterday’s mistakes.

[@teagancombest6049]

​@@chrisperyaghwho decides what is "proper" speech? You?

[@chrisperyagh]

@@teagancombest6049 Certainly not you if that's your response, Karen.

[@Mullkaw]

ill be sure to keep a eye on this development in the coming future!!

[@robertjenkins6132]

I will also keep mine eye on it.

[@Karrrsten]

I'll keep both mice on it.

[@mikemosz]

Small clarification from a software perspective, the 'a eligible ticket' from Asiana Airlines would not have reflected phonetics. When you have text in two different colours the strings have to be separated, so what has happened is they programmed in 'Purchase a ' and then didn't check whether the red text started with a vowel

[@AmazingJane137]

Interesting

[@andrewdunbar828]

An development I've been watching. It is a interesting one!

[@Decopunk1927]

I was in New York a couple days ago and saw signs referencing "a uptown train" and "an downtown train"

[@DavidMcMillan888]

I notice that “an historic” is wheeled out often when the speaker feels the historic matter is especially important. “An historic collapse of civilisation…” compared with “Working with clay was a historic tradition.” Nothing to see here.

[@greenockscatman]

9:15 "A other allied health professional" would also serve to differentiate from "another allied health professional" and make it clear this is a health professional allied with others imo.

[@the_neutral_container]

I like how you slipped that little PSA in there 😁

[@jonathanreilly]

That closing comment about the emphatic form of the indefinite article plus glottal stop getting confused with "eight" surprised me. Usually in my American speech, in addition to using "an", a final glottal stop (like in "eight") before a following vowel sound turns into a rhotic tap, so the confusion is doubly avoidable!

[@trevoro.9731]

Such tendency is specific to the particular speech transmission environment, or more precisely, adaptation across many popular environments to clearly identify the words apart and from other similar words. The extreme case of such is the accent of sailors aimed to keep the clear distinction of words when shouted over a large distance (with extremities of such representation expressed in Finnic languages) or some Italic/Spanish accents for communicating within very close personal space (face-to-face).

[@MrBelles104]

Very ear opening video! I don't know how often I use a instead of an, but it's making me second guess everything.

[@iwishihadseenthatlol]

This is beautiful. Immediately subscribed

[@JohnnyGreenslit]

Thank you for your keen insight and clear explanation!! I love the minutiae of the spoken word :)

[@mplsmike4023]

Love the eigh’ English muffin example. Brings home why we should use careful, standard language when conversing with strangers.

[@jennifercarter1265]

Or repeat back the order…

[@experimentsininsanity4478]

@@jennifercarter1265 "Ok, you want eight English Muffins?" "That's what I said, a' English muffin"

[@Beastimus]

or just use the reduced form

[@notwithouttext]

it's not so much that it's nonstandard but that it's not clear. there are some cases that the standard is less clear than the nonstandard version. for example, "dice" as a singular noun makes it clear that it isn't referring to the verb "die" (to perish) or the other noun "die" (molding device) or the word "dye". and "bade" pronounced to rhyme with "made" makes it clear that it isn't referring to the word "bad".

[@JimCullen]

I find it really weird that the example was English muffins. Because for me the number "eight" is a lot like "an". The t becomes very clearly pronounced before a word beginning with a vowel, though it may be dropped if it starts with a consonant.

[@Kuzamori]

I love this channel so much

[@notwithouttext]

satisfying how "to", "the", "do", and "a" can match up like this. the last part about how "a" can sound like "eight" also has a parallel, with "the" vs "that" mentioned in your t-glottaling video.

[@chrisjohnston3512]

Is it weird that I don't have a schwa in my weak form of "do" but I do in "to"? Mine don't match! >.

[@notwithouttext]

@chrisjohnston3512 no it makes sense, it's a verb instead of a plain particle, so it's more likely to be strong. incidentally i thought myself that saying "do" with schwa was weird but then i realized i do that in casual speech, at least.

[@iykury]

​@@chrisjohnston3512 i think i reduce the word "do" in fewer situations than "to", but it still happens. for example, in fluent speech i'd probably say "what do you mean?" something like [wəɾəjəˈmĩn] ("whaddaya mean?"), where both the consonant and vowel of "do" have been reduced.

[@naufalzaid7500]

​@@notwithouttext "do" is reduced in the same contexts "have/has/had" get reduced, when it is being used as an auxiliary verb (except when it's being emphasized). So you'd get the reduced form when you say things like "do they know?" and "people do not care" but when you're trying to emphasize that you do do something as in "I DO eat taco", then you wouldn't get that weak form

[@notwithouttext]

@@naufalzaid7500 similarly it's not as likely to be reduced in "i do dishes" or "i do pushups" even though the "do" is not emphasized

[@IvyANguyen]

I always wondered about the a/an thing and as a native English speaker in the US, know the usual form is 'a' if you have a consonant sound following and 'an' if it's a vowel following. I wonder about how weird it would sound if someone flipped these, like if someone re-ordered adjectives around in a sentence in an atypical (didn't want to say wrong here, because it may not really be a rule) order.

[@michaelcherry8952]

When I and my siblings were young, my Mum posted alphabet cards around the walls of the basement to start us off on learning our letters. It backfired slightly with my older brother who insisted that "A is for NAPPLE" and "O is for Norange" as in "A Napple" and "A Norange". It took him a while to work out where the pause should be! I've found that all languages, but English in particular, tend to work on a consensus basis. When something becomes commonly used, it gradually becomes mainstream enough to become official. And then 5 years later the OED throws up its hands and says "All right, all right! We'll put it in!"😆 Although this is definitely egalitarian, it does lead to a lot of confusion and difficulties when people are learning English as a second language. Questions about "why is it said that way" are often met with a shrug by the teacher, who has no idea other than "we've always said it that way".

[@revangerang]

Ironically that is exactly how we got the word "orange" from the original "a naranj"

[@angeldude101]

​@@revangerang So you're saying that orange went in the opposite direction as "another", "newt", and "nickname"?

[@revangerang]

@@angeldude101 yep! So did “apron” from “napron” (related to the word napkin!)

[@michaelcherry8952]

@@revangerang I wonder if "a naranj" has something that rhymes with it?🤔

[@revangerang]

@@michaelcherry8952 that is an excellent question 😂

[@Erika-us6xz]

I knew the broad concept spoken about in this video, but it was twice as interesting to dig further into it. I'm Russian and in my language the glottal stop is simply omnipresent so I don't really use /w/ between vocals when speaking English, although in my uni we're taught to (as the only correct way). And I didn't know that even native's speech has different ways of hiatus resolution at thus point. Such an interesting video, thank you!

[@RCake]

Dr. Lindsey, I very much loved the references to the upcoming US election. Beautifully done 🥰🤩🥰

[@GUAMANIANable]

I took it as a gratuitous cheap shot.

[@FransLebin]

It was terribly out of place

[@cdub42]

I agree with @RCake, and am proud to see intellectuals of all walks of life standing up for democracy and reason in the face of the noisy cesspool of far too many KZbin consumers.

[@jakehr3]

Your videos keep me coming back to the fascinating world of linguistics (at least the English phonetics portion). A genuine disappointment of mine with death being inevitable is that I won't be able to see/hear what English will sound like in 200 years time. It will be so fascinating, and I hope that future generations appreciate all of this corpus we are providing in written and spoken form all over the internet, which should allow a much better tracking of the history compared with us trying to track historical changes through the occasional 17th and 18th century treatises

[@KingSejongTheGreatOfKorea]

Personally, I don't really mind "a" before words starting with a vowel and don't even notice it most of the time - with one exception: "a other" really irks me, possibly because it is more noticeable.

[@ICLHStudio]

My guess would be that that's related to the fact that "another" is a word on its own; and so instead of just slipping up in a minor grammatical rule (which is generally easy to overlook), it sounds like you are specifically mispronouncing a word (which is much more noticeable).

[@MaoRatto]

I notice it heavily, and it is like razors as a cotton swab going through my ear holes as I am like " Are you dumb? Are you using prefix or not? " As I notice in my speech, it's very elision based. So the indefinite articles are very much influenced to be stricter. Mainly TH voiced forms lose vowels before vowels and sometimes triggers R to become fortified if it is RAT, Rattle. While Indefinite articles trigger voicing for "it " into "id" while if there isn't an article or any vowels near-by. It unintentionally raises the pitch of the first vowels, then devoiced final consonants. Also I notice we are slowly weakening or fortifiying the /j/ phoneme and weakening /w/ into a vowel. So /j/ is just too weak when fronted. As normally the mouth position here is closer to much closed despite southern influence, but it often makes words like " Day " to "Déeh". Sometimes we forget to aspiration /t/ and /k/, but kept P aspirated.

[@ButzPunk]

May well be related to the fact that "an other" is regularly rebracketed as "a nother" (evidenced by its division thus when infixed with "whole" as discussed in the video). Funnily enough, I think I'd use "nother" after a pause (e.g. "a, um, nother thing") so the rebracketing must be pretty strong in my idiolect

[@goose7453]

this video is such a gem

[@nutherefurlong]

14:17 Emphasis on the indefinite a makes it sound like ay, which like an can connect to the following vowel easier than just the a might. Doesn't work for all vowels as easily as an does, though The example at 14:36 seems odd to me because it seems to lack an article further on in the statement. Shouldn't be THE app? To me it more suggested a lack of mastery of articles generally Often I've noticed my own speech patterns in these videos but some of the alterations that happens when articles meet words genuinely surprised me. Was fun, thank you

[@RyanTheHero3]

This is really fascinating to see. I couldn’t imagine speaking with hard attack personally but it’s cool to see language evolving right in front of us.

[@pooroldnostradamus]

Clarkson was ahead of his time.

[@potatoonastick2239]

Awesome video. Must've taken a lot of time to find all those examples to demonstrate. Good stuff all round.

[@urinstein1864]

You always do such a great job of collecting examples of what you're talking about. I think the J.J. McCullough one at 12:05 was particularly well chosen. :)

[@XOguitargurlOX]

I noticed recently that I would pronounce "the" differently in different sentences. I wasn't sure why, but now I have a hunch!

[@NerlenDept]

Apart from the main idea of the video, I've learned that the auxiliary 'do' is usually pronounced with schwa before the next word beginning with a consonant. As a learner of English, I find this extremely useful: usually, books emphasize the importance of changing the final sound only in 'the', 'a' and 'to'. Thank you, Dr Lindsey! PS I remember that you discuss this subject in either your book or the blog, but here, of course, you've made a stronger impression.

[@EebstertheGreat]

In my dialect at least, it's just /d/ in most places. Sometimes it even assimilates into a following yod, like "do you" turning into /dʒuʷ/.

[@rmdodsonbills]

Not to complicate things for you, but in my variety of English, I use the "oo" vowel in "do" no matter how the next word starts. In rapid speech it might morph into the "look" vowel, but I don't use schwa in that word. On the other hand, I use a schwa in "to" in (almost) all cases. It's probably more of a regional variation than anything else, though, so for whatever that's worth to you.

[@NerlenDept]

@rmdodsonbills Thanks for sharing! As for me, I reduce the GOOSE vowel to the PUT vowel before consonants, but now I'm going to reduce it further to the schwa.

[@NerlenDept]

@@EebstertheGreat Cheers! I also reduce it almost to /d/ in a very rapid speech. I know that many speakers (perhaps most of them) of SSB which I target also turn /d/ into the JAM consonant before /j/, but I prefer not to do that.

[@timtranslates]

But only if it's not emphatic. If it's the emphatic "do", as in "people do pronounce words differently", there's no schwa.

[@espumatt]

As a non-native English speaker with a virtually native level, these small changes over time seem somewhat unsettling.

[@nolanstout23]

9:28 “why waste energy on the N as well” 🤔

[@frankhooper7871]

I could probably manage eight muffins, but unfortunately this morning I only had one left...and it had gone mouldy.

[@minirop]

FInally, a youtuber I know about: Paul from Lang Focus

[@artugert]

I saw that too.

[@andrefmartin]

Excellent lecture, with a plenty of examples! Thank you.