A [h]istoric confusion
You can read paragraph upon paragraph of British English and not even notice a difference. And then all of a sudden, someone bites into a butty or gets struck by a lorry and you feel an ocean dividing us. A British colleague years ago stopped me dead in my tracks when she said something or other was “really hotting up.” Whaaa? Did you just make that up, I asked her. That can’t be allowed where you’re from, can it?
We all know there are differences. Yet keeping them separate is not as easy as it seems. Subtle usage borrowings slip back and forth. Gray and grey are used interchangebly. Periods or commas falling within–or outside–quotation marks are ignored. Pretentious dads in my neighborhood refer to their kids’ soccer uniforms as “kits.”
Yet outside my job, I’m not a stickler for correct usage. I could care less how people write or speak (pun intended). I find languages fascinating yet I’m really more interested in descriptive than prescreptive grammar.
One thing that often bugs me though is the an before historic when spoken or written by an American. Those who have studied phonetics will recognize the diacritic for the aspirated h in the subtitle of this post. Because we in the US aspirate the h–giving it a consonant sound–the correct article is a not an.The rule is based on sound. Conversely, a Londoner pronounces the word “istoric” and needs the n to avoid the unnatural and disruptive pause in his sentence.
But who knows, maybe over time the an will force a pronunciation change that will in turn justify its usage. Language is fluid. And even more fluid since the internet. As we translators who research terms on the web know, an alternate universe of mistranslation exists, so a term that was once clearly wrong, now has tens or even hundreds of thousands of google hits to corroborate its validity. So we’re both blessed and cursed with the mountains of information available today, and must be more vigilant than ever. But as translators, I suppose that is our speciality [sic].
4 responses so far ↓
1 Rosie // Mar 2, 2010 at 7:11 am
I’m British but I’m starting to think that over the years I’ve become Americanized (sic for my compatriots) by the influx of US media in Britain. I understand “hotting up” but I’d never say it; I say REsearch instead of the ostensibly British reSEARCH; and I always pronounce the “h” in “historic” and therefore precede it with “a” and not “an”.
No doubt web 2.0 will blur the boundaries further. People from all around the globe are chatting on forums, reading each others blogs etc. Many of my friends now refer to themselves as “mom” and not “mum”!And it looks like this is only the beginning…
2 Glenn // Mar 2, 2010 at 9:32 am
Rosie,
Thanks for your comment! I do know that the US exports not just its movies and hamburgers, but its language too. Even to non-English-speaking countries. Especially in business, which is so quick to adopt the latest jargon, whether it makes any sense or not.
And you’re right, the US flavor of English seems to be the lingua franca of web 2.0. Yet the flow will continue to travel in both directions; whenever we Americans want to look down on our compatriots, it seems it’s usually with a nod to Britain or France.
Just add British accents to any movie, and it’s automatically more sophisticated.
Thanks so much for reading!
Glenn
3 John Ross // Mar 15, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Omitting the aitch sound at the beginning of ‘historic’ is never correct standard British English, though it is common enough in speech. What I suspect you really have in mind is the outdated custom of using ‘an’ before certain words of French origin - ‘an hotel’ is the one everyone remembers. In this line of thinking, ” history” and “historian” (not “historic”) were treated differently, because their etymology is slightly different, both coming originally from Greek via Latin but the “historian” being directly descended from the French (the stress on or off the first syllable is vaguely related, as well, but even so ‘historic’ is always preceded by ‘a,’ not ‘an’). It’s all tremendously old-fashioned, and a British English speaker who uses ‘an’ in this context sounds like something out of P. G. Wodehouse. “An ‘otel” is nearly excusable, but only if you really do pronounce it ” ‘otel”. If you say “an (aspirated) hotel,” you are just being unforgiveably pretentious.
@Rosie. I’d spell ‘Americanize” with a zed as well. But not a ‘zee’.
4 Glenn // Mar 15, 2010 at 3:57 pm
John,
Excellent! Really. Thank you for reading, and adding your 2 pence.
I hear, and read, pretentious Americans putting the an before historic, but never before hotel and (I don’t think) before historian.
But the pretentious are often wrong, because they don’t aspire to be right, just more right than those around them.
I stand corrected on British pronunciation, and thank you for the lesson.
Glenn
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