> The British pronounce it as "istory," so they use "an" before.
"The British" aren't monolithic and neither are our approaches to this.
I certainly don't say "it is an historic day" or "staying at an hotel" with the soft H, because to me, in the 21st century, it's an upper class affectation (I am from a middle class background and from the commuter belt 30 miles south of London).
I moved to a slightly posher place and I know people who do say "an historic day" (soft H) still but it's largely out of habit/age/schooling.
The BBC have stopped doing this, as a rule. The monarchy have moderated this aspect of their speech too — I am sure I remember the younger Prince Charles say "an historic day" with the soft H, but I am fairly sure he would now say "a historic day" with the hard H; he has been trying to progressively moderate his RP accent for the last 25 years or so.
No offence taken — I just mean to clarify that the proportion of British speakers who do this an-then-soft-H thing is actually pretty small.
Having said that, there are two constituencies that do it, I guess:
- Those who do it out of upper class background or affectation: using the French soft H that survives in the American pronunciation of 'herbs' is a class signifier.
- And those who do it out of broader dropped-H slackness; it's not out of the question that someone would say "it's an 'istoric day" run together, in a variety of regional and rural accents.
So if you meant the latter, then, yes! Probably more people do it as a result of dropping H more generally than out of upper class identification.
But in the middle of those two, most of us, I think, use the hard H, and certainly "BBC English" has moved in that direction.
> TLDR: Communication from a human is not only the material being communicated, it's also a signal that the human understands the message they are sending you. When you pass that message via an intermediary (regardless of whether the intermediary is a human or an LLM), the receiver is never sure that what they received is what you intended.
100% right. The fundamental point here is:
- it's OK to be wrong
- it's OK to be wrong and not know
- it's a little less OK to be wrong when you should have known
- it's much less OK to be wrong when you haven't put any effort into being right
- it's far less OK to be wrong when you are pretending to know either way
Relying on AI writing risks pushing you further down the path to worse kinds of wrongness.
I do not personally even think AI is useful for editorial purposes; I would rather read and re-read my own text and edit it down (which, despite my overlong comments here, I actually do), than have someone else do it. The reason is simple: editing is my search for the clearest way to express my thoughts.
I tend to turn grammar checkers off, but leave spelling checkers on, because they catch typos and a handful of my spelling gremlins like "liaise".
We avoid doing this (only a few silly old men and bigots do it, as a dog whistle in national politics).
You should not do this.
It is not, in any sense, the "ordinary name" of the UK. It was pure chauvinism even when it was in common use. Don't do it; it will inevitably and correctly annoy people.
ETA: Even "Britain" and "British" are pretty complex. "Britain" is not really a place in any meaningful or legal sense. The islands are "the British Isles" but only cartographers and mariners really say that (because Ireland is one of them). Great Britain is an island. No identifiable map region is called Britain. "British" is a citizenship and a passport; whether people say they are British is increasingly a personal decision and people have a really wide variety of reasons for their choice.
Safer to say "The UK" when you mean it, and England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland only when you specifically mean those.
Anything else is quite likely to get your drink spilled over you.
So is Fireball XL5! (And Terrahawks, Space Precinct etc.)
Also The Secret Service but after one episode of Unwinisms you will probably have had enough.
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