Talk:Rennsteig

Very well:

There is still some divergence of opinion over which form of the indefinite article should be used before words that begin with h- and have an unstressed first syllable. In the 18th and 19th centuries people often did not pronounce the initial h for these words, and so an was commonly used. Today the h is pronounced, and so it is logical to use a rather than an. However, the indefinite article an is still encountered before the h in both British and American English, particularly with historical: in the Oxford English Corpus around a quarter of examples of historical are preceded with an rather than a

Accordingly, as the "h" is pronounced, let us use the correct article. And yes, this is English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ondundozonananandana (talk • contribs) 20:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The point is, the "h" in "historical" isn't pronounced by everyone, including e.g. some BBC newscasters. So both forms of article are correct and insisting on one form in every instance would seem to be WP:POV pushing. --Bermicourt (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage takes the following approach:

"Nowadays the silent h persists only in a handful of French loanwords (heir, honest, honour, hour and their derivatives), and these need to be preceded by an. The h of other loanwords like heroic, hysterical and hypothesis may have been silent or varied in earlier times, leaving uncertainty as to whether an was required or not. But their pronunciation is no longer variable and provides no phonetic justification for an. Its use with them is a stylistic nicety, lending historical nuances to discourse in which tradition dies hard."

To me, that makes it appear as if insisting on "an" is the actual WP:POV pushing. Ondundozonananandana (talk 08:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)