I've always preferred "a," it reads better and no one actually pronounces "an" before history. I don't know why people still write "an" before it, maybe something to do with the consonant H before a vowel or something. Good ol' confusing nonsense english rules strike again...
I always thought it was dependent on the sound of the next word. If it sounds like a consonant I would use "a" and if it sounds like a vowel I would use "an."
For example:
"A European Nation"
"An Amazing Spectacle"
I don't have a clue if it is grammatically correct.
If you say "an" then drop your "h". A Historic or an 'estoric. BBC newsreaders pointedly saying "an Historic" riles me, however much it may pedantically be correct.
In the spoken language, it depends whether or not you pronounce the h or not, I would assume. I don't know if the rules for written english is written in stone.
Well, ok, a few get dropped by some speakers, in small words, in the casualmost register and rapid speech, for reasons of economy, but nobody would ever say 'istory and it's not widespread. Personally, when speaking rapidly I'd be more likely to say "Where's m' hat?" dropping the vowel of 'my' and using a fairly strong H sound. What you typed sounded cockney to me.
I think the problem is that what you people think of as "Australian" is actually just the very casual and informal register of a minority of relatively uneducated, mostly rural speakers of the 'broad' dialect.
I don't drop "h," so it's always "a" for me. But (for example) the BBC accent does drop its "h"es, which is why I don't get pissed off when I read "an historic victory" or some such in the BBC news stories on the Internet. I do get pissed off by Americans who use "an historic" unless I know they drop their "h"es (e.g. from the South).
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