How English Works #6
How English Works 6
A vs An
Intermediate
In this series, we learn about English grammar differently than usual. There are no charts, no memorization, no confusing rules with millions of exceptions. Instead, we look at interesting aspects of English and how you can understand them. Don't worry if you fully understand. Notice these while you're immersing in English, and it'll all make sense with time.
Hi there. Welcome to How English Works. And these aren't your typical grammar or language lessons. We're not going to be doing any drills. There's definitely no charts and no memorization. My goal with these videos is to explain to you a bit more about how English works and what we do and what it means. That's the entire goal. And today we're talking about something simple yet very, very common. A versus an. Oh, I can't spell. V-S, an. A versus an. They're two different words and well, they're kind of not. That's the big thing. So let's talk about them. So, a and an are the same word. They mean the same thing, right? So you can think of them as being the same thing, but they have a little bit of a difference, and that's this nuh sound. And to put it simply, this N, this nuh sound is separating the uh, the vowel sound, this open uh, uh, uh, right, that open vowel sound. You can do it with me. Uh, uh, right, it's an open sound. And an N sometimes we put as like a wall between an open sound and another open sound. So for example, a word like an apple. Right? We need this end there because it sounds weird to say a apple, a apple, right? There's this weird, like extra, I don't know, like merges weird. And so you say a napple, right? And this, it kind of can be almost like this, right? I can actually grab this word and it sounds basically like that. A napple, a napple. Right? Or what about an eraser? Oh, do I know how to spell that word? Yeah, an eraser, right, to erase something with, an eraser. And remember that this is the important part, what's at the beginning of the next word, but it's the sound that matters. So you can't actually look, you have to get used to hearing that there's this wall between the two words, right? There's this invisible wall that we need to add in order to make it sound okay, right? So actually a word like an honor, No, that's not how you spell honor. An honor, ah, stupid language, it's so hard to spell. An honor is also with an an, because you need to have that barrier. But any word that starts with some other like closed sound, like a tuh or a puh, right, a pie, a phone, that's not how you spell phone. right, a card, a mouse, right? There are tons and tons of different sounds that it can be, but it's something that's more closed. If you want a little bit more of a specific answer, all of these more open sounds, these vowels, are sounds like ah, ay, ow, oh, right? They don't have that stoppage in the mouth at all, right? There's this opening sound. You can sing it. Ah, ay, yo, yo, right? Those are all vowel sounds. Those are what start the words that require a nuh. You will sometimes hear people say things like a apple or a honor. It is typically a very uncommon regionalism. It's not very common at all. Or it's a child, many children will say things like that. Or people with speech impediments sometimes do it as well, but it's generally not a normal thing. It definitely does happen, but it's usually part of like a specific dialect. And so if you use it in, broadly in the US, it might sound not as you want. But definitely listen to when people don't use it, because that's probably interesting. If they're a native speaker, they might have a reason for it. It's part of a dialect or something like that. And so there's definitely a lot of interesting ways that any language gets used. I also want to quickly talk about how these words sound, because this is actually another big difficulty that people have. Let's make this smaller. Because we often call this word A, right? The name of it is sort of A. A, I'm actually gonna write it like that, A, or you might also hear Anne is sort of a name for this word, which sort of, it's actually gonna, I'm gonna write it in IPA, right, sound like that, it says Anne, Anne. So let's actually do it like this, A and Anne. But that's not always how we say them. That's usually how we say them when they're very strong, right? So Anne Honor, oh, this is such Anne Honor. However, that's actually not the most common way to pronounce these words in real speech. You're more likely gonna hear uh or un, right? An honor, an honor. And this is because they are almost always unstressed words. And unstressed words typically become a schwa. That's this uh sound, un, right? Another, an honor, an eraser, that sort of thing. And so that's what's going on when you hear a, an, that kind of thing. You also can hear it stronger, right? A, a phone, a pie, right? You can say a phone or a phone. Those are completely equal. It's sort of just a preference. Much like the words either and either, it is just a preference and a dialect, whatever you personally say. So the other one is a strong uh or um, but this is usually an. Un is a little bit odd, right? You wouldn't say un-honor. You could, but I think it's more natural to say an-honor if you're really trying to strengthen that an, although it's way more common to hear uh and un. That's really it with uh and un. I guess I could also talk about the difference between uh and like what it means, I guess, as I haven't talked about that. So let's do that really quick and then we'll be done with this video. So let's make this all small really quick. Get small. There we go. So It's a lot like saying one, right? It kind of equals, um, like saying one thing. Um, and that's, that's the general one, right? I have, I have a phone in my hand. I have a phone in my hands, right? Uh, this is a pen because you want to say how many it is, right? I have two phones in my hands. Right? That's two phones, but there's no other, right? It's sort of functioning as like one in that sense. And that's a very common use, but it's also functioning as the way to say that there is a thing that is not specific. This is just a pen. It's not any specific pen. It's just the pen that I have, right? This is just a phone, but we're not really talking about it in any sort of specific way. It's just a phone. Um, right, so it's, it's also becomes a thing, right? That's not important, right? So not important. Um, so for example, if somebody asks you, hey, can you give me a pen? They're just asking for a pen. They don't need anything specific with the pen. They just need a pen. They might add some adjectives to make it clearer, right? Can you hand me a blue pen? That's possible, right? But the other option is what you can say. The other thing instead of a might be the. And if they ask for the pen, there's a specific pen they're referring to. There's a specific thing that they're talking about. There's this specificity. So you might have heard somebody say, you're the best. That has a bit of specificity to it. It sounds like somebody is saying that you are, of all of them, the best. You wouldn't just say, you are a best, that doesn't make any sense. You could just say, you're great, that also works, but that's not as specific with it. And so this case of a or an is talking just about any old thing, right? Not always, right? There's other things that happening, like it does happen to mean one, it happens just to mean like a general, not important, not specified thing. But those are the two most common ones when it's just, a general thing because you do need some sort of modifier on pretty much all words. We talked about this in another How English Works one, but there's some words that actually don't want modifiers like water, right? Can I have some water or can I have water? So you don't need a modifier there, but that's a special kind of word. But if you ask somebody for a water or a pen, you do need to give a specific like, amount, basically. But yeah, that's all that I have to say about uh versus un. They are very common words. If this is a little bit confusing, you'll hear it again and again and again, so pay attention to when you hear uh versus un. It's often very subtle, right? Like I said, it's this very little, just a bounce, right? An apple, right? Just a tiny touch of the nuh. But Yeah, so that's everything that I have for today. I hope that this was helpful to you. If you enjoyed it and you want to see more, definitely leave me a comment down in the description below. That's a specific description, but the comment is whatever your comment wants to be. So leave me a comment in the description below and I can make a video about kind of any topic. Is there anything that you are confused about in English or that doesn't really make sense to you or that you want to understand better? Let me know. But also make sure that you're subscribed because there's lots more videos like this one for your English learning pleasure. But that's everything that I have for today. Thank you very much and I'll see you in another video. Bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.