Quote:
Originally Posted by Coops
It's 'a hotel' for most of those in the UK, i'd say ( biased obviously), because 'an' sounds wrong precisely because the 'h' is spoken - and any rule that says otherwise is as made up as the one about the split infinitive... Bah, humbug ;-)
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The "h" is generally elided when the first syllable is unstressed (ie only sounded very weakly), hence the word is effectively starting with a vowel, so you use "an", not "a". Thus "an hotel" (first syllable unstressed), but "a hospital" (first syllable stressed). It's not a "made up rule" at all, but reflects the way that words are actually spoken. Split infinitive are purely artificial, by comparison.
I would think any author who wrote "a hotel" rather ignorant of English grammar, I'm afraid. It's on the level of not knowing the correct usage of "who" and "whom".