grammar - Pronunciation of ‘an hundred’



I just saw a number of comments complaining about the first n in the phrase ‘an Herculean task’, claiming it implied a mute h. But is that true? My impression has been that earlier all words on h + vowel got an an, regardless of whether or not the h was mute. Was ‘an hundred’ pronounced ‘an undred’?


PS. Let me be clearer that I am not asking about standard contemporary usage. I never doubted that ‘an Herculean task’ had an archaïc ring to it. But the fact that something is archaïc does not make it wrong.




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