N.Wells
Posts: 1836 Joined: Oct. 2005
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Quote (GaryGaulin @ May 14 2017,15:33) | Quote (N.Wells @ May 12 2017,12:25) | Quote | A "hypothesis" is an idea you can test. |
No, that’s close but it’s simplistic and is not technically accurate. (& 'An', not 'A'.) |
And FYI:
Buddy has a hypothesis: www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0CGhy6cNJE |
The way I learned it (in England) was that even though "hypothesis" has a sounded 'h', it also has an unstressed initial syllable, so it gets an 'an'. Similarly, "an historic occasion".
However, on research, both are considered acceptable and "a" is reportedly winning out in America outside of academia, so I concede the point and apologize (although I'm going to stick with 'an').
From Grammerly Answers Quote | there is a group of words of three or more syllables with the stress on the second syllable, such as historic, historical, hypothesis, hysterical, habitual, harmonica and hereditary, where people tended to still use "an" rather than "a". The "h" is less well sounded in these words compared with certain other words starting with "h" where the stress is on the first syllable such as history, histogram, hypothetical, holiday and hemorrhoid, or on the only syllable such as hand, host and hymn. Thus "an historic" is still often used. .... All in all, it appears that "a historic" will win the day, although "an historic" will still no doubt be used where the "h" sound is weak. |
Now deal with the rest of the problems, which are far more serious.
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