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To the best of my understanding 'an' is used when a word starts with a vowel (an occasion), or sounds like it does (an honour). Ukulele sounds like it start with a u, so why isn't it prefixed with an 'an' ?

ffledgling
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    I don't think it's about a uniform or an uniform--it's about how ukulele is pronounced. Everyone knows how to pronounce uniform, so the question is do you pronounce ukulele the same way? Wikipedia says: The ukulele (/juːkəˈleɪliː/ ew-kə-lay-lee, from Hawaiian: ʻukulele [ˈʔukuˈlɛlɛ] (oo-koo-leh-leh). So it's pronounced "yoo-" in English but "oo-" in its original Hawaiian. – Steven Littman Mar 13 '16 at 19:03
  • I downvoted because there are already many complete explanations of when to use a and when to use an, including on this site, so I don't think this question is useful. – herisson Mar 13 '16 at 19:08
  • @StevenLittman: Regardless of how ʻukulele is pronounced in Hawaiian, all the sources I have checked list only pronunciations starting with /j/ for the English word ukulele. – herisson Mar 13 '16 at 19:09
  • @sumelic, This wasn't a question about when to use a and when to use an, I've stated in my description I already understand that, it was about Ukulele in particular. Although I did figure out the answer by looking at the answer pointed to in the duplicates, it mentioned palatial approximate, reading on which led me to another answer's discussion http://english.stackexchange.com/a/155/24143 , which answered my question, but it's not as straightforward as "already answered" – ffledgling Mar 13 '16 at 19:52
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    The answers to the previous question say you use "a" before words starting with a consonant, but that is only helpful if you know whether "ukulele" starts with a consonant. What if it starts with a non-syllabic vowel, or a semi-vowel, or a glide? What then? – Greg Lee Mar 13 '16 at 21:31
  • @GregLee: "The palatal approximant is a consonantal sound, even though the letter itself is a vowel. Since we use the pronunciation of the word following the article to determine whether we use 'a' or 'an', and because it is pronounced starting with a consonant, we use 'a'." – herisson Mar 13 '16 at 22:52
  • @sumelic, No, [j] is not consonantal. Since Preliminaries to Speech Analysis it's been classified by most phonologists as a non-consonantal sound. You could look it up in SPE, for instance. – Greg Lee Mar 14 '16 at 01:40
  • @GregLee: I was quoting from the answer in the linked question. Do you have any more recent references than SPE? – herisson Mar 14 '16 at 01:41
  • @sumelic, I read the linked question and didn't think the answers given there were very good. No, I don't have a reference at hand. – Greg Lee Mar 14 '16 at 01:45
  • @GregLee: You say "most phonologists" rather than "all," and in a paper I recently read by Balogné Bérces Katalin (1998) she says "Whether it [jʊ] is a single diphthong or a sequence of two phonemes is, to my best knowledge, still a matter of debate." Also, she puts "j" in a consonantal slot in words like "vineyard." So I don't understand why you say "[j] is not consonantal" like it is an established fact. What does it mean? – herisson Mar 14 '16 at 01:51
  • @sumelic, I gave you two references, didn't I? I see no relationship to the question about whether [jʊ] is a single phoneme. I don't know what "consonantal slot" means, but if the reference is to syllable structure, the appropriate feature specification would be non-syllabic (see SPE). – Greg Lee Mar 14 '16 at 01:59
  • @GregLee: Ah. After more research, I see that "consonantal" is a term of art that is used in different ways from "consonant." That's pretty confusing terminology --that we can call [j] and [w] "non-consonantal consonants." I was confused because I was thinking of "consonantal" as just being the adjective form of "consonant." – herisson Mar 14 '16 at 02:31
  • @GregLee: To clarify, I misspoke when I said "consonantal slot"; I should have said "C position." That is the terminology used by Balogné Bérces. – herisson Mar 14 '16 at 02:34
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – herisson Mar 14 '16 at 02:46

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