Topic
Tiny grammar note
The egg plant's story about the sun starts with 'An historical'. It should be 'A historical'. Unless the egg plant is a cockney...
editingandwritingservices.c...
Replies
- The style article you quote isn't entirely accurate. The practice of using an before an unstressed syllable beginning with h is still used in some circles. TS are probably making the egg plant sound archaic on purpose.
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I can't resist an opportunity to bring up Grammar Girl. This lists some sources that support it in cases where you pronounce the 'h' sound but the stress in the word is on the second syllable, much as Elizabeth pointed out, but even in the early 20th century it was considered pretentious and/or archaic. *That* said, at least one British newspaper requires it, and varying sources all point at various 'someone else's who do it (one source said "some Americans," another said, "British English," and so on). This one is from the 1920s and is rather the conversation we're having right now (it's a retort to someone who said that any use of "an" before an aspirated "h" was utterly obsolete).
The American Heritage Dictionary gives a quick rundown of the arguments and says that in a formal context, either way is acceptable. Merriam-Webster's usage note calls both acceptable as well, even using "historic" as the example. With all of that put together, I can't argue against the egg plants using it. I mean, sounding pretentious and archaic is one of their defining characteristics, n'est-ce pas? (Just to preempt any potential comments about the cedilla, it isn't used when you're using the phrase in English.) -
"N'est-ce pas" doesn't have a cedilla in French either.
*ducks out with possibly least helpful contribution ever.* ;-) - Confessions of a Spice Plant: "... if that's the way you see at it..."
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Damn you, Not a Princess! I am so shaking my fist at you. I mean, who would ever have thought that I wouldn't perfectly remember a single semester of university French from more than a decade ago? (Other than me, I mean, and I'm clearly wrong!) ... I'm just going to go feel a little old now.
Myrrah, without more context it's hard to say, but that one does have a slim potential of being deliberate. Plants are clearly adept at odd sentence construction. - Where do you stand on: "a herb garden" or "an herb garden"?
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I generally stand in front of herb gardens.
But, being an American English speaker, it would be "an herb" (silent 'h'). Someone speaking the Queen's English would probably go for "a herb" (pronounced 'h').
Note that it goes by pronunciation not spelling, so someone with multiple friends named Herbert would ask for any of them as "a Herb" on either side of the pond (unless they were Cockney I suppose). At least that's what I got out of the posted articles. - MM: I, too, wondered whether it might be deliberate. The language of trees needn't conform to the rules of English (or French).
- Considering we have trees who speak almost entirely in sound effects, I'm inclined to agree with MM and Myrrah. Since the egg plants already use bizarre words and sentence structure, I just take any wrong-way-rubbing bits of grammar as intentional.