In standard English, is it no longer recommended to use the word "an" instead of "a" before a word beginning in 'H', such as "historical"?

Huh? I don’t remember that ever being a rule. Saying ‘An H’ is correct because it’s pronounced “aych”, hence it begins in a vowel sound and so is preceded by ‘an’. Most words that start with H actually start with the h sound, and thus are preceded by ‘a’, since it’s a consonant sound.

As far as I’ve ever known (which, disclaimer, only goes back two decades), it’s only ever been that ‘a’ precedes a consonant sound, and ‘an’ precedes a vowel sound.

According to this site, “an historic” is more common in the UK, but has been falling out of usage since the 1990s. In the U.S., putting “an” before /h/ sounds, especially before /hɪ/ has been steadily falling out of usage since the 1940s. Since /h/ is a very marginal consonant sound and is often lost cross-linguistically (as in French, Spanish, and Italian), some see it as “hardly a consonant” and thus the prevocalic form “an” is used instead of “a”. But it does seem to be an antiquated practice and most grammar references I can find say to say “a historic” rather than “an historic” in American English.

I’m the young generation, and it was news to me when I first heard it. I’ve only heard older people use “an” with h words. Hour is the only h word I can think of that uses an “an”.

@dxs We do it anytime the leading H is silent, like “an hour” or “an honest man”, or “an honour”. That feels natural, as @DominicY said. There’s no controversy there.

I was admonished for editing a course text just a couple of years ago for removing the “an” from phrases with a hard H, like “an historic”. I was surprised – this seems like such an antiquated way of speaking now.

An+H forever!

I’m with @tinyfaery on this one. I prefer the way “an” sounds and I think it flows much better.

Fascinating, I’ve really never heard/noticed that.

45 years ago, I was taught to use ‘an’ before ‘h’ words as a hard and fast rule. Force of habit, I still do and probably always will. It was an exception taught as readily as “i before e, except after c”.

Neither caffeine nor protein did our leisure bring us, though its species meant we needed to seize eight foreign geishas, lest our beige conscience deify our feisty deity. What weird heights our heinous, prescient heirs did bring us in their obeisances! The heifer’s weir did seize our society in its seismic sovereign’s surfeit.

@BhacSsylan That solemn scene renders me silent.

If I use “an”, I end up pronouncing it as “an istorical…”. But if I use “a”, I pronounce it as “a historical…”.

Good catch, @RocketGuy. I say an istorical.

Say “The king produced a heir.”

@RocketGuy I don’t do that myself, but I’ve often wondered if it’s where the habit of dropping H’s in some (especially British) dialects started. I can’t think of an American accent in which people regularly do that.

it seems to me that the old rule was there for an obvious reason, and that reason is apparent the second you try to wrap your tongue and lips around speaking such a thing as “a obvious reason”.

@BhacSsylan _Huh? I don’t remember that ever being a rule. Saying ‘An H’ is correct because it’s pronounced “aych”, _
Is that the reasoning behind ”A one”, because the ‘O’ takes on a ‘W’ sound so that is why even though it is a vowel, it isn’t proceeded by the traditional ”an”?

@Hypocrisy_Central That is the reason, yep. In school we’re taught that certain letters are vowels or consonants, but really, it’s sounds that are vowels or consonants. Some letters that typically represent vowel sounds, like <o> and <u> can actually represent consonant sounds in words like “one” or “union”, so it’d be “a one” and “a union”.

@dappled_leaves ” I can’t think of an American accent in which people regularly do that.”
People from Houston pronounce it “you-stun.”

@DominicY What exactly constitutes a consonant sound? I remember learning that all syllables must contain a vowel sound. The u in union seems to possess both a consonant and a vowel sound!

@dxs They do, yeah. The “u” in union is a combination of the consonant /j/ (i.e. the “y” sound) and the vowel /u/, so it does represent both :)

Midwestern, @dappled_leaves. Midwestern dialect will say “an istorical”. They gave Bob Dole quite a bit of crap about the economy of the Midwestern dialect when he ran for president.
I’d read a ‘humorous’ quote and think there was nothing abnormal about it. Reread and it was missing key elements.
There’s sort of a shorthand.

@ibstubro Thanks, I was wondering. There are many types of American accent that share some characteristics with English accents (I’m thinking mainly of the South, different parts of New England), but I couldn’t imagine one where this occurred.