what I love about it is that it isn’t exactly “when the following word starts with a vowel”, but rather when it sounds like it starts with a vowel, regardless if it does or not.
my favourite example is “herbs”. In some versions of English, you say her-buh, so it would be “a herb”. Some parts of the world, the ‘h’ is silent, so it’s pronounced “erb”, and would “an herb”.
Of course. Silly me. I‘m not an native speaker, so excuse my mistake.
No you were correct. Commenter above was joking or maybe just wrong. It should be “an apple,” “a pear,” etc.
Your written English is better than most native speakers.
what I love about it is that it isn’t exactly “when the following word starts with a vowel”, but rather when it sounds like it starts with a vowel, regardless if it does or not.
my favourite example is “herbs”. In some versions of English, you say her-buh, so it would be “a herb”. Some parts of the world, the ‘h’ is silent, so it’s pronounced “erb”, and would “an herb”.
that concludes today’s language lesson!