Why do we use the ‘a’ article sometimes, before words starting with vowels (a, e, I, o, u), and why do we use the ‘an’ article sometimes, before words starting with consonant letters?
Use of A And An
The use of the indefinite articles (a and an) is often dependent on the pronunciation of the word, irrespective of the starting letter.
For example, the word university is pronounced starting with “you” and hence is preceded by a despite starting with a vowel, the similar logic is followed in case of the word ‘utensil’.
On the other hand, words like honour and hour have a silent ‘h’, and the pronunciation starts with a vowel. So ‘an’ is used for them.
– Written By Animita Chakrabarti