Before I enrolled on a phonetics course, I was always puzzling about how to place the indefinite articles (a and an) before some words, such as hospital, hotel, honourable and holiday, in my verbal and non-verbal conversations. I strongly believe that this is one of the issues many speakers are facing; we were in the same boat. Several overzealous, acclaimed teachers of the English language wrongly taught us that every word that begins with a consonant letter requires an ‘a’ (e.g., a bag, a pair of shoes, a note), while ‘an’ must precede every word that begins with a vowel letter (e.g., an apple, an orange, an egg). It is high time I exposed the misinformation about these articles for our comprehensive understanding.
NNPC stands for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, an initialism is ‘a term from the initial letters of several letters, which is itself pronounced letter by letter’. The term can not be categorised as an acronym because it is unpronounceable as a word, as in JAMB (Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board), NECO (National Examination Council), SAN (Senior Advocate of Nigeria), ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), among others.
The following are other examples of initialism:
UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination)
UN (United Nations)
AU (African Union)
EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission)
ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices Commission)
SUG (Student Union Government)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary explains that an article is ‘any of a small set of words or affixes (such as a, an, and the) used with nouns to limit or give definiteness to the application’. This is one of the blatant, common lies about indefinite articles: the first letter of every word determines their usage. How do we explain ‘a university’, ‘a European man’, and ‘an honourable’? Have these words not betrayed the grammatical superstition being peddled around since our childhood days? What is the fate of the current students in primary schools? I hope they are not learning that the vowel letters (a,e, i, o, u) only determine the placement of these articles. Of course, our highly respected English teachers can do better!
The use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ is grammatically determined by the sounds (for words, acronyms and the first letters of initialisms). This rule is applicable to NNPC, as in, ‘My best friend is an NNPC’s worker’. Why did I not use ‘a’ instead of ‘an’? It is because the /en/ at the beginning of the initialism is a vowel sound, which requires ‘an’.
Study the following example sentences:
A UN’s ambassador visited Nigeria in 2020.
Explanation: The first sound in the initialism ‘UN’ is consonant /ju:/. So it requires ‘a’.
An EFCC’s officer had arrested the woman’s sons before she arrived.
Explanation: The initialism starts with the vowel sound /i:/; therefore, ‘an’ must precede it every time.
Sola’s company was registered successfully by a CAC’s agent.
Explanation: The letter ‘c’ in the initialism, which is correctly transcribed as /si:/, also requires ‘a’.
The new student was gifted a uniform by the health prefect.
Explanation: ‘Uniform’ starts with the consonant sound /ju:/. Therefore, ‘a’ is mandatory.
It is important to learn the transcriptions of the English alphabet to have a sound grasp of today’s class. For example, an anonymous writer wrote on Facebook, ‘There is an “s” in the word “physics”.’ I was not taken aback by the indefinite article ‘an’ preceding the letter; its transcription is /es/. The presence of a vowel sound at its beginning is the reason for the article used.
Pronounce the following letters loudly:
c – /si:/
f- /ef/
m-/em/
k- /keI/
l-/el/
q-/kju:/
u-/ju:/
n- /en/
p- /pi:/
r- /a:/
v-/vi:/
t-/ti:/
d-/di:/
x-/eks/
s-/es/
Read the sentences below:
There is an ‘l’ in the word ‘flex’.
Can you see an ‘m’ in the noun ‘monkey’?
Does the adjective ‘physical’ have an ‘h’?
All the sentences above have ‘an’ preceding them because of the sounds of the quoted letters (l, m, and h). In English, we do not pronounce words according to their spellings. Kindly desist from using letters for their pronunciations and focus on the phonetic transcriptions. Candidly, I struggled with the standard articulation of words before I finally studied the 44 sounds of the English language. You can also learn to sound like a native speaker!
I will discuss these indefinite articles (a and an) in detail in our next class.
Assignment
Attempt the following questions:
1. The man wishes to be _______ NYSC’s staff member. (a) an (b) a (c) some
2. Audu was ______PDP’s agent during the general elections. (a) a (b) an (c) several
3. There is ____ ‘r’ in the word ‘repeat’. (a) a (b) many (c) an
Kindly forward your answers to samueltolulopealimi@gmail.com or 07049203179.
Names of those who answered the last questions correctly
Abdullahi Nuhu, Okere Chigozie, Oreshade Gbenga, Sultan Musa, Yahyah Aishat, Mohammed Aishat, Balogun Temitope, Alimi Olive, Rasheed Fatah, Ahmed Roqeeb, Racheal Oriniyin, Charity Praise, Victory Adaeze, Samuel John and Jonathan Solomon
