English for Today by Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose (Dr GAB)
AN SUV or A SUV?
Some acronyms can make the choice of article difficult to make. Users of English may wonder, for instance, whether to say ‘a SSS2 student’ or ‘an SSS2 student’. Since meticulous attention must be paid to the articulated sound, and not the letter, one can tell that the initial sound in ‘SSS2 student’ is /e/, which is a vowel sound. It will, therefore, be appropriate to say ‘an SSS2 student’—not ‘a SSS2 student’. In the same vein, it behoves you to say ‘an MC’ (though you say, ‘a master of ceremonies’), ‘an SUV’ and ‘an NDA graduate’.
Another difficult sound to deal with as regards the choice of article is the yod sound. It is phonologically represented as /j/ and commonly portrayed as ‘y’ in its orthographic realisation. Moreover, it is the initial sound in words like yam, you, youth, yoghurt, et cetera. The confusion with this sound is when it is realised by vowel letters ‘e’ and ‘u’; the yod sound is present in words beginning with the vowel letter u, such as ‘union’ and ‘university’. In such a situation, the readership should note that ‘a’ is the appropriate article to deploy. The glide /j/ is equally found in words like ‘Europe’ and ‘euphemism’, which begin with letter e. The vowel letter should not tempt us into thinking that the article ‘an’ is appropriate in this circumstance, hence we say ‘a European nation’.
GAB
No comment