LingAlert: "An" Added to Endangered List
I've been tracking this one for a few years now, and I think it's official: The article "an" will disappear from the American English lexicon in our lifetimes.
Have you even noticed? It used to be, "Hey, can you grab me an apple." Now, more and more, it's, "Hey, can you grab me a apple?" This is one of those language developments that makes no sense to me because it doesn't make anything easier. It's smoother to say "an" before a noun beginning with a vowel, yes? Yet, people choose the hard, awkward way. Kind of like how "how's your workload?" has turned into "hey, what's your bandwidth looking like today?" (I've also never understood how "being on the same wavelength"--a more techie saying--has been replaced by "being on the same page" in an age when no one reads books. Anyway...)
My only theory on the disappearance of "an" is to round up the usual suspect: hip hop. If you love hip hop like I do--and you know I'm lying--you'll notice that "an" is linguata non grata among the gold-toothed crowd. And in that context, it works. Kind of like "I can't get no satisfaction" sounds a helluva lot better than "I cannot acquire for myself one solitary morsel of satisfaction, yo." Thus, the progression from Jay-Z to my daily life can be charted as follows:
Have you even noticed? It used to be, "Hey, can you grab me an apple." Now, more and more, it's, "Hey, can you grab me a apple?" This is one of those language developments that makes no sense to me because it doesn't make anything easier. It's smoother to say "an" before a noun beginning with a vowel, yes? Yet, people choose the hard, awkward way. Kind of like how "how's your workload?" has turned into "hey, what's your bandwidth looking like today?" (I've also never understood how "being on the same wavelength"--a more techie saying--has been replaced by "being on the same page" in an age when no one reads books. Anyway...)
My only theory on the disappearance of "an" is to round up the usual suspect: hip hop. If you love hip hop like I do--and you know I'm lying--you'll notice that "an" is linguata non grata among the gold-toothed crowd. And in that context, it works. Kind of like "I can't get no satisfaction" sounds a helluva lot better than "I cannot acquire for myself one solitary morsel of satisfaction, yo." Thus, the progression from Jay-Z to my daily life can be charted as follows:
Comments
But "an historic" actually is the way they say it over the pond, isn't it?