Which is the correct option for below sentence?
Who doesn't know that he is ____ universally acclaimed writter?
1) a
2) an
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mschaudhari
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3Does universally start with a vowel or a consonant? – John Lawler Dec 09 '18 at 18:49
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My understanding is that the word 'a' would be the most appropriate in this case. This is quite confusing as the norm (a bit of an oxymoron when having anything to d with the English language) is to use the word 'an' when preceding a word that begins with a vowel. However, I've seen it explained this way; When preceding a word that starts with a vowel, the word 'an' is use except in those cases when the initial 'sound' of the word is more like a consonant. The word 'universally' could be written as 'youniversally', with the 'Y' taking on the hard sound of the letter as opposed to the 'soft' vowel sound that 'y' and 'w' often use (i.e. sunny).
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This is mostly wrong. All that matters is vowels versus consonants: words like yesterday, university, user, hierba, yerba, humor, European, yurt, hurricane all start with *consonants, while words like ylem, hour, umbilical, huevo, umbrage, ypsilon, yclept, honor* all start with *vowels. Then there are the very many words that sometimes* start with vowels and sometimes with consonants, depending on the speaker and accent and position and utterance, including hotelier, homage, her, him, herb, herbal, hotel, historic, opossum, Heloïs — and perhaps even Houston. – tchrist Dec 09 '18 at 19:51
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If I refer to the answer that you refer to:https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/152/when-should-i-use-a-vs-an, then that answer is in agreement with what I said. How was that mostly wrong? For example, I wouldn't say 'an university' or 'an user'. – user327437 Dec 09 '18 at 20:57
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When I say vowel or consonant, I'm talking about sounds. You appear to be talking about letters, which is misleading at best. – tchrist Dec 09 '18 at 21:15