JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.
The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.
Thank you NPR editors for not saying “an historic” for once.
“an historic” isn’t incorrect, neither is “a historic” it’s the same issue as “a European” - the a/an choice is based off of pronunciation which is inconsistent because languages diverge (especially english)… the dumb thing is that “an” is written instead of just being written as “a” and optionally pronounced as “an” when followed by a vowel it’d meld into.
Anyways, both choices are valid. The only truly incorrect thing is that en-uk use “speeded” as the past tense of “speed” and that’s just fucking awful - we can all agree on that. /s
checks Google Ngrams
According to Google Ngrams, in American English, “an historic” and “a historic” were about neck-and-neck until 1935, when “a historic” started steadily pulling ahead. Today, “a historic” is far more common.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historic%2Can+historic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-US-2019&smoothing=3
In British English, “an historic” had a solid lead for a long time, with “a historic” pulling ahead in 1986, and “a historic” now being significantly much more-common as well.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historic%2Can+historic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-GB-2019&smoothing=3
The one that drives me nuts is “pressurized”. In American English, you “pressure” someone to do something, but “pressurize” something with gas. In British English, you “pressurize” both, which is ambiguous. I mean, given context, I can normally make it out, but it’s just ambiguity that doesn’t need to be there, and it always gives me the wrong mental image to start with.
Well that explains why my British father with a doctorate in English drilled using “an historic” into me.