this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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I noticed that he says 'an historic honor' at 2:43. I know it's silly to point this out, but I didn't expect this from a native English speaker, and presumably an intelligent one given his credentials. They need to run his speeches through autocorrect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not questioning his abilities as the prime minister, but I'm just slightly disappointed. As citizens, we should always criticize people in power. If they're intelligent than the average, criticize them even more fiercely! Anyhoo, I'll brace for the downvotes lol.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

How would you have phrased it?

It looks pretty reasonable to me.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ha. Tell me you don't read much without telling me you don't read much.

Language is a bit more complicated than primary school telling you "an" goes before vowels and "a" goes before consonants. It's about the sounds made not the letters, and H goes both ways regularly.

An honest man vs a hateful one.

And you can have vowels with "a" too!: a uniform, a useful idiot, etc.

Merriam-Webster specifically calls out "historic" as going both ways depending on the speaker.

Your "gotcha" got you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You’re tripping yourself up on the difference between British English and American English. Canadian English is tolerant of both forms.

Oxford, where he wrote his thesis, would require ‘an’ before ‘historic’. When Governor of Bank of England, he would have had to have been careful to use British English.

If you’re a Canadian using American spelling and grammar checkers to define your language, you might wish to reconsider that. MS Word does have Canadian and UK English options.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

I regret that the Prime Minister's correct use of the English language has hurt your feelings. I hope you feel better and that you have a good day.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

I mean, “an historic” is perfectly fine. You’re embarrassing yourself here. For a long time, in many accents, the first “h” was not pronounced in words like historic, meaning it was preferred to use “an”. As the “h” began being said, most people shifted to “a historic”, but “an historic” remains perfectly correct and fine.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

An historic honour is the correct phrasing.