Fuck me; I give up: AN historic.

[campylobacter]

Whilst negotiating my paycheque, I spied amongst the event posters of my financial institution (no less than the eminent Wells Fargo) the announcement "JUNETEENTH: AN HISTORIC EVENT..."

Lest I deprecate of the observance of such a seminal event in my nation's history (the abolition of slavery in the United States of ANerica), I hereby disclaim that I am AN sophisticated speaker of AN sprawling, illimitable, living language and, as such, am fully privileged to substitute grammatically incorrect articles whenever it suits my pretensions or hypocritical yet idiosyncratic, transliterated pronunciations whilst sacrificing clarity.

Thusly: AN history, AN Hispanic, AN hysterical, AN hotel, A honest.

My grammer is pastede on yay!

Comments

[bcfan.livejournal.com]

Thusly: AN history, AN Hispanic, AN hysterical, AN hotel, A honest All perfectly correct for Canadian philatelists and British touring car champions -- and everyone else in those countries, even those without a paycheque. :D Except for 'A honest', that just hurts my ears.

Are article usage rules that different in the lower 49? Because, you know, I thought your grammar rant had something to do with the execrable term JUNETEENTH until the last bit.

[bcfan.livejournal.com]

Unless you wrote the word JUNETEENTH yourself. Then, um, please ignore my 'execrable' comment...

Une historique

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

> Are article usage rules that different in the lower 49?

Heck yeah. Us 'Mericuns drop the H when we say "'onest to Gawd" and "sexy 'eiress Paris".

We aspirate the H when we say "the hhhistory book", "them Hhhispanics" and "danged hhhistorically accurate".

So why should we NOT aspirate it when we say "historic"? My mom, who speaks Engrish, is c0nfuz3d.

The only reason I figure that some believe "an historic" is acceptable arises from copying early 20th century British usage when Cockneys and slagging off the Monarchy were hip. Not aspirating H was so bichen, it was included in the old London Times Manual of Style.

Then Fowler and other grammarians started to become more popular, and dropping the H made you sound retar--, uh, French.

Thus I blame Francophones for the confusion, and likewise the entire country of Canada.

Canada is AN HEVOL.

That's an entirely different rant!

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I did not invent the word JUNETEENTH.
http://www.juneteenth.com/

In fact, the rest of the poster said:

"JUNETEENTH: An historic event in African American History."

The execrebleness of it presumes that African Americans were the only people enslaved. I guess the whites and their racially mixed descendants who were also enslaved are just a forgettable minority of a minority.

Emancipation is a victory for EVERYONE.

And you danged Canadians abolished slavery 30 years before the US did!