On Sat, 05 Oct 2019 20:23:02 +0100, NY wrote:

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message
...
On 10/4/19 2:51 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:

I have a LED

That irritates me, why don't you write "an LED"? How do you say "LED"?
I say "Ell Eee Dee", not "Light Emitting Diode". So it needs an "an",
not an "a".

"an LED" irritates me. I know the word is "light".

I think it is normal convention that an initialism that starts with a *vowel
sound* takes "an", on the grounds of euphony: that in normal English, you
never precede a word that starts with a vowel sound with "a".

Hence an apple, but a uniform. A hedge or a hotel or a historic event but an
honourable occasion (H is sounded for the first three but silent for the
last one). For some reason, it considered "better" to use "an" before hotel
and historic, even though the H is sounded. That sounds as daft to my ears
as "an spoon" - it's not a vowel sound so you use "a". I could understand if
people pronounce hotel the French way, but it needs to be consistent: "an
'otel" or "a hotel".

My god! I agree with you completely. I was about to say the same thing as soon as you wrote "a historic event", it's really grating to my ears to hear an historic.

Also, Americans get the Hs wrong. Like erb, as in marijuana. An 'erb would be fine, but they think the H is always silent.

As regards initialisms/abbreviations, you do get anomalies like "an LED"
(ell-ee-dee) that starts with a consonant but "a UFO" (you-eff-oh) that
starts with a vowel pronounced as a consonant.

I say "a URL" for a web address, but I knew someone who said "an url", as in how you would pronounce "hurl" with a silent H. He insisted that acronyms should be pronounced like words. WLED became "well-ed", as in "well" followed by the name "Ed". I assume because pronouncing a W before an L was too difficult, so he then added extra vowels.