Grammar police I need your help please [title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[CareBear50]

First world problem I know, but this conundrum is driving me slightly batty. Is it "a Hawaiian" pizza or "an Hawaiian pizza"??

I understand that if a noun or adjective starts with the letter h , if the h is silent eg heirloom, you would say an heirloom. However, if it's a hard h sound then you would say eg a hairline fracture.

However a Hawaiian pizza is harder to say than an Hawaiian pizza....so which is correct please??

TheSandman - so now we have not only the Grammar Police, but the Spelling Police too !

May I introduce you to Sgt. Dribble of the Punctuation Flying Squad who will now issue you with a caution about the unwarranted use of spaces before exclamation marks.

I think the rule is that if the word starts with H and the emphasis is on the second syllable, it's "an".

A holiday, a hospital, an hotel, an Hawaian pizza.

As far as I can tell, Hawaiian language pronounces its H. So a Hawaiian. Not an an 'awaiian.

I've never heard an hotel before so I find it interesting it's mentioned so many times here

I think grammar pedants tend to say an hotel and normal people tend to say a hotel.

I’d definitely say ‘a Hawaiian pizza’.

I am afraid dictionary says A hotel.
www.google.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/amp/english/hotel

The word ‘hotel’ has been in use in the English language long enough to be thoroughly nativised, and no native speaker would say 'an oatelle' (unless they are a tosser).

Wrong I was brought up to say "an otel" by my upwardly mobile middle class parents - am 57 and they were very proper and it was the "done thing" in their day 😏

Also only allowed to watch BBC but that's a whole other conversation 😬

MyBlueMoonbeam, I too used to say that but it is not said now.

@Lynda07

Probably is in some leafy corner of middle England 😅

PS: I never knew there was anything 'middle class' about it, I don't think there is. It's just a way of saying something which at one time was popular. I was actually corrected when I used it at school and I'm 70.

Hee hee, like Birmingham?

Maybe not - I just thought it was as our lifestyle was totally 60s/70s middle class stereotype - you weren't a Forces child too were you @Lynda07?

an hotel is the correct form i thought.
i've often heard and read it.
i don't say it because i have not been anywhere for 14 years, and even then preferred an motel, esp express by holiday inn, excellent breakfast.

Bahaha I think you know what I meant 😉

@alexdgr8

I think we are "of a certain time" or our parents were at least 😆

an motel
😱

think i must have been subliminally influenced by crossroads on tv when young; and i didn't even know what a motel was then.
think i assumed it was what they were called in the midlands. a midlands hotel = a motel, seems reasonable.
i also didn't realise that westerns were set 100 yrs ago-ish. as they were called westerns i thought that's how they lived in the western part of america, contemporary. after all they weren't called, tales of the west in the olden times, or the last century. very confusing.

Love it 😊

An 'aircut
A haircut
I think it's just whether the h is hard or soft (or silent)?

OP surely it depends orally whether or not you aspirate the aitch. Written should always be AN as per the rules of written English 😉😅
Btw don't give up your day job 😁😁

If it makes a vowel sound, it's 'an' eg an hour. Otherwise it's a.

oh no, who mentioned the dreaded, aitch. pack drill at the double, now.
they go mad about that on GN, drives them mad that some say Haitch !
live and let live i say. and i think there are regional variations.
actually i think i am too confused by everyday life, in or out of the old west, to care how people pronounce the names of letters.
(don't get me started on flubber.)

Former English teacher

"A" Hawaiian.
"A" house
"A" horse

Usually, if it sounds weird when you say it, it isn't correct

I'll take a Hawaiian pizza, pineapple, burly-male-fire-walker, please!