Why you should know: The ‘a’ vs ‘an’ conundrum is not about what letter actually begins the word, but instead about how the sound of the word starts.
For example, the ‘h’ in ‘hour’ is silent, so you would say ‘an hour’ and not ‘a hour’. A trickier example is Ukraine: because the ‘U’ is pronounced as ‘You’, and in this case the ‘y’ is a consonant, you would say “a Ukraine” and not “an Ukraine”.
Tip: when in doubt, sound it out(loud).
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Y can act as a consonant or a vowel, depending on the position in the word.
Definitely a vowel: Baby
Part of a vowel sound: Play
Not a vowel at all: Yes, lawyer
When a Y starts a syllable, it typically doesn’t take a vowel sound, closer to a “soft j” sound.
a soft J ? in english ? this is the first time I hear of this, are you sure ?
Yeezus/Jesus Yawn/Jawn Yoke/Joke
I don’t know phonetics (or whatever the right term is for “mouth noises for speaking” is) enough to say if y- consonant/soft-j is the closest pairing. As I sit here like a weirdo going “yo-yo-yo” and “jo-jo-jo”, they have a similar starting position, but soft-j definitely has that “ch”. I think maybe it’s closer to an r, like you/rue.