Re: How do you pronounce "HLL"

Gmork wrote:
> Frankie say:
> > Thinking more about it, I think the pronunciation of "HLL" may be
> > influenced by the indefinite article preceeding it. "a high level
> > language" or "an aitch ell ell". Depends.
>
> It's the other way around. The pronunciation, with some exceptions,
> dictates whether to use a or an. Here, "an HLL" is correct because
the
> sound at the beginning is a vowel.
>
> An HLL (a-).
> An MP (em-).
> An x-ray (ex-).
>
> I'm not aware of any exceptions in this case, though there are some
> involving "h".

*AHEM*

There are NO EXCEPTIONS involving "h"...

As you correctly determined, it's solely a "pronounciation thing" to use
"an" when the next sound is a vowel...even, as "an X-ray" or "an MP3"
shows, when the written letter is not a vowel, if the _SOUND_ is a vowel
sound then it's "an"...

This last point is where the "h" confusion comes from...some accents -
the true "cockney" native Londoner accent, for example - 'ave a tendency
to "drop the aitches"...and because these people 'ave an 'abit of never
pronouncing an "h" at the start of a word, then, under these various
"drop the h" accents, all these "h" words start with a vowel sound...so,
you see, they "'ave an 'abit" of doing this...while everyone else would
"have a habit" instead...

There are NO EXCEPTIONS involving "h"...it should ALWAYS be "a horse",
"a historic occasion", "a habit", etc....

Unfortunately, because of a tendency of some strong accents to "drop the
h" then it's created a "confusion" for some people, who think that "h"
is somehow "special"...it isn't...the "rule" still stands: It's "an"
before a vowel sound, "a" otherwise (basically, the simple purpose of "a
/ an" is because "a" itself is a vowel and then that's two vowels next
to each other...and something like "a alphabet" has to have, as someone
else noted, a "stall" or "stutter" placed into it in order to separate
the "a" article and the "a" at the start of "alphabet"...English avoids
this little "issue" by having the "an" alternative that, by sticking the
"n" in there, allows "an alphabet" to be said without pause or
hesitation...

[ Note that despite there being spaces between words in written
language, there are no "pauses" in spoken language, in fact - except for
the delibrate stuff, of course, of commas, colons, full stops (US:
periods) and such - between words...this is one of the reasons why
"computer speech recognition" has often been such a pain to
implement...the human brain just "knows" all the words being spoken and
the context of the speech and uses that "internal knowledge" to
"separate out" the sounds into words...

For example, think about the phrase "Armoury Car"...say it aloud and
then you'll spot that this would be very difficult for a computer to
discern from "America", if someone had a bit of an "unusual" (non-native
English) accent speaking it...definitely problematic is you've got the
non-rhotic English accent (don't explicitly pronounce "r" at the end of
words...Brits and Aussies are normally like this...some American accents
are "rhotic", some are not)...or, of course, the various Bart Simpson
jokes of phoning up Moe and asking for "Mike Hunt" and so forth...

Basically, the good "speech recognition" stuff tends to simply be wired
up to a dictionary, is programmed with basic appreciation of grammatical
structure (to help it "work out" what the right interpretation might be
by favouring those which are grammatically correct over those that
aren't)...and the main "trick" is to process an entire sentence then you
can use the other words as "clues" (i.e. try dividing up different ways
until you find a combination that actually makes some kind of
grammatically sense with the words found in its "dictionary")...

Turning on the TV "subtitles" feature on for "live" events, I've noticed
that they must use speech recognition computers that follow these
principles...and you can see it in action...how it's always about a
sentence behind...

I like to switch on the TV "subtitles" feature whilst watching the
"Eurovision Song Contest"...a kind of "schadenfreude", watching the
speech recognition machine suffer terribly and get everything totally
wrong on a show where they keep switching languages every two words:
"Great Britain, no points...Gross Britannien, nul points...let us now go
to the Netherlands" / "Good evening, bonsoir, Guten Abend and
Goedenavond from the Netherlands to our hosts in Berlin! Here are the
votes from Amsterdam...Voici les voix d'Amsterdam"...and so
forth...though, I notice, this year, they had the sense to pre-program
the song lyrics into the machine (although, it did screw up and confuse
one song for another, showing the wrong lyrics), rather than for it to
try to decypher them...as, if not in English for "universality", they
could be singing the song in any language...including the Israelis, say,
deciding to sing in French, this year...and, no, I have no idea how
Israel counts as "European" for this "Eurosong Contest"...but they seem
to let anyone in, to be honest, "Euro" or not... ]

Anyway, there is actually NO EXCEPTION for "h" at all...it's just the
tendency of some accents to "drop the h"...so, aloud, they say "an
'istoric occasion" or "an 'orse"...because, like "an X-ray" or "an MP3
player", it's whether the _SOUND_ is a vowel sound, regardless of how it
might be spelt when written down...as they "drop the h", they make the
word inadvertently start with a vowel and, hence, the "an" before words
starting with "h"...

This is also confused a little bit more - as is Randy's point with this
thread, in fact - that if the word is an acronym like "HLL", then "aitch
ell ell" is actually "an aitch ell ell"...because, just to confuse
matters, the letter is called "aitch" and does not start with the letter
it represents (mind you, it's not alone: "double u"...or "ex"...or
"em"...or "en"...or even "why")...so, "a happy bunny" or "an 'orse" or
"an HLL"...and "H" looks like a terribly confused situation...

But it isn't really...the fundamental "rule" is simply that it's "an"
before a vowel _SOUND_ (how it is written is immaterial, it's how it is
pronounced that decides it), otherwise an "a"...

The problem is that some people - due to accents and other
"variations" - pronounce a vowel sound when, strictly, they shouldn't be
doing so...the rules themselves aren't confused...the people and their
accents are...

There is no exception for "h"...the root problem is simply that, when
"h" starts a word, people don't always pronounce it the same
way...indeed, though the Oxford English Dictionary (the "de facto"
authority in the UK, at least) does not acknowledge "haitch" as a valid
alternative to "aitch", some people (Roman Catholic Irish, for example)
sometimes say "haitch" and, thus, it would be "a haitch ell ell" to
their pronounciation...

Nevertheless, there should be no "confusion" or "exception" within the
context of your own accent - even if different accents and
pronounciations don't always correspond - because it's all about the
"vowel sounds"...

Unfortunately, as a different conversation in a different thread
acknowledged, some people don't even know what is and isn't a "vowel
sound"..."W" and "Y" are strange letters because they've
changed...English is a Germanic language and if you note the
pronounciation of "W" in German, it's a "V" consonant, not an "ooh"
vowel sound...hence, originally, English probably was similar...which
explains the designation of "W" as a "consonant"...despite the fact
that, sorry, the current "ooh" sound (with or without the "h" following)
is essentially a vowel in its sound...yet, English did not change the
"designation" and it's inconsistently treated as a consonant sound, even
though it isn't: "a while", not "an while"...

And there used to be a "thorn" letter, which looked like "y"..."thorn"
was simply pronounced "th", not "uh"...hence the phrase "ye olde
tavern"...this, in fact, would NOT have been pronounced any differently
in the past to "the old tavern"...just old archaic spelling using
"thorn" and a silent "e" at the end, where modern spelling doesn't
require one...note that this is how "thou" turned into "you"
too...people writing "thou" using the "thorn" letter - which looks like
modern "y" - and then it "blended" together...

Anyway, these letters have actually changed...and this is how they have
the strange "semi-vowel" classification...I mean, in pronounciation
terms, there can be no "half-way" between a vowel and a consonant...it's
got to be one or the other...and (ignoring the exceptions of the nasal
"n" and the aspirant "h"), every word must have a vowel sound in it
somewhere because that's how the human vocal appartus works (this is
true of all languages because it relates to what humans can physically
pronounce, not anything language-specific)...as such, the word "sky" -
which by the "classification" that "y" isn't a vowel - appears to be "a
word without a vowel"...of course, it isn't..."y" is a vowel in this
context 100% unambiguously...but, according to the "theory" that "y" is
not a vowel, words like "sky", "spy" and such should not exist...

No, "h" isn't the problem..."w" and "y" are the true problems...even
though - say it aloud to assure yourself of this being the case - a word
like "yacht" starts with a vowel sound (sounds very much like "ee":
"ee-oh-t"...indeed, it sounds like the same as what the Germans call
their letter "j" in full: "jot" ;)...because of its "classification" as
a "consonant", it's "a yacht", not "an yacht"...similarly, it's "a
while", not "an while"...but the actual _SOUNDS_ that appear there are
_VOWELS_ (check out their IPA prounciations: IPA is a "sound alphabet"
and has a letter for each possible sound in any language...and then
words can be written 100% phonetically in this alphabet and it provides
a "language neutral" way to write pronounciations...often used in
dictionaries (especially English ones, where written and spoken language
can differ so wildly in places) after the "keyword" to clarify its
pronounciation)...

English is, without doubt, the most non-phonetic (and confusing for it)
language on the planet...basically, the pronounciations of words
"evolved"...but everyone insisted that the spellings would not be
"revised" to match...this is also NOT helped, of course, by the fact
that English is a bastardised language, formed from many quite
significantly different "source" languages, so it was a confusing mess
when it started...it's just gotten worse ever since...

Indeed, one very common strategy with people who are learning English is
simply to consider the written and spoken language as "partially
separated"...that is, you learn the pronounciation of each word on a
"case by case" basis, more or less ignoring the spelling of it entirely
(it's a "hint" as to how it might be pronounced but no more than
that)...

No wonder Englishmen like Shakespeare and Tolkien invented words
(Tolkien entire separate languages of them, Shakespeare merely
"embellishing" English :) in their writings...when faced with such a
hotch-potch bastardised inconsistent mess...

The "Vulgar Tongue" is still, really, a name that fully applies to
English...BUT, note, this "mess" is a mess to be celebrated in an odd
sense because the "mess" derives from English being the "common
tongue"...a language guided by "democracy", "consensus" and
"evolution"...it's an "open source" language, so to speak...and
similarly prone to "no organisation whatsoever" in its implementation...

So, note, I'm not actually negatively criticising English pointing these
things out...it's not an insult, so requires no defence...English is a
mess but it has reached that state for good reason...and long may it
continue to be a mess - as long as it's still the "common tongue",
guided by its people, not "authorities" - because that's the way we like
it, right? :)

Beth :)


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