syntax - "a" verus "an" for abbreviations starting with 'U'


My friend is implementing an app for Amazon Alexa which currently speaks the indefinite article "an" in noun phrase acronyms which start with the letter 'U', for example:


(1.) *I found out he was an U.S. president.

My idiolect prefers "a" here instead, presumably because my aggregated experience of the "a/an" contrast perceived this as a rare (unique?) case where English formally licenses a syntactic alternation (insofar as spelling is overt syntax, and syntax is formal) driven by phonotactic considerations.


So much for the grade-school rule-of-thumb about "whether the spelling starts with a vowel." In any case, I'm a native speaker and it does seem to be the case for me:


(2a.) I'm an unhappy camper.
(2b.) Bob is a used car salesman.

Since "U.S." in sentence (1) is pronounced in as in (2b), I prefer the phonologically reduced form:


(3) I found out he was a U.S. president.

Apparently contradicting this idea is the evidence of native speakers who insist on "an" for words starting with 'H'.


(4) ?It was an historic victory.

I marked (4) questionable to indicate that it's not in my idiolect. My question is, without devolving into a prescriptive/descriptive debate, are there other considerations beyond what I've mentioned here that could explain or underlie the observed alternation?



Answer



The rule is painful as far as code is concerned because the choice between 'a' or 'an' is based on whether it sounds like a vowel is at the start of the word rather than the actual spelling.


For example, as mentioned in a similar question: "A united states citizen, a unique opportunity but an uncle"


This means that any code needs to determine what the word sounds like ... or the equivalent there of (such accessing a mapping table or list of exceptions)


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