calling grammar queens - 'a or an'

[katierocket]

an hostile environment or a hostile environment?
such a simple thing and I can't remember the exact rules. Doh.

An SAE, but A stamped addressed envelope.

An SAE because S is pronounced "Es".

Fantastic!

But when you write it you would write "a SAE", wouldn't you, because it is generally read mentally as "stamped addressed envelope"?

I can't remember ever seeing "an SAE" (but then there's a lot I don't remember these days [batty emoticon])

Drat!

what about hotel - as in an hotel ? that's not a vowel

uh ! just read MrsFogi's bit about an hotel - I'm not being very bright today

Covered that below, binker - we don't say or write an hotel these days (used to I think, in the old clipped BBC English days, but not now).

Ooh, I would probably say an hotel Janh. In certain circs, I think [another batty emoticon needed here too]. I remember being taught it anyway.

I have just read most of this thread. Now I am confused. How do so many foreign people learn english? Why is this complicated language so popular? Going back to ratio and patio, through, though, tough and trough. Why does the sound of a word completely change when you change the first letter? Laughter, daughter.
If F O R M is form why is W O R M pronounced worm and not warm. If F I R M is firm why has worm an O and not I? also why is it called a (or is it an?)hamburger when there is no ham in it? Why is the opposite of without not within? Please someone help me before the men in white come to take me away

Very good questions, rainbow! It's a completely mad language and it's incredible that most of us can cope with it, never mind foreigners. There's a piece in the Telegraph today about a BBC spelling competition programme called Hard Spell, starting in the autumn apparently, which includes this bit:

I'm sure that makes it all perfectly clear! I think English must have absorbed words from other tongues much more than any other language - that has something to do with it.

(PS Without can be the opposite of within - as in "There is a green hill far away without a city wall"!)