Useful

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Help! I am usually an über pedant about all things linguistic (see how I even insisted on putting the umlaut in über?!) but I am sleep deprived and over-thinking things and I've got to the stage where I'm looking at a perfectly ordinary sentence in my own first language and I can't decide if it's right or wrong!

The phrase I want to use is 'a useful insight'. I wrote it like that instinctively because 'an useful ...' just sounds wrong. But then I can't think of any rule where u is sometimes not a vowel, like h or y (I know h isn't ever a vowel, it just varies whether it's aspirated or not, but you know what I mean). Now I've been staring at it for ages hoping it will go away or I will magically think of a synonym for useful that doesn't sound too pretentious!

Help! A useful insight? An useful insight? Time for bed?

It's a useful insight

Too tired to remember the exact reason, but it's to do with the sound the letter makes, which is why some words starting with an 'h' needs 'an' and not 'a' before them including my example.

It makes a y sound. So you'd say a yellow dress.

Hope that was an 'elpful insight

It was a very useful insight (which was my back up option, just insert very to avoid making a decision), thanks both. I'm still giving up work for tonight though. Clearly too tired to think straight.

You've worked it all out yourself despite being sleep deprived!

It's 'a useful'. Use of 'a'/ 'an' depends on whether the first phonetic sound in the word that follows is a vowel or a consonant, not whether the first letter of the spelled word is a vowel or a consonant.

Useful is pronounced 'yoosfull' so first sound is a consonant - y. If the first sound is a consonant, despite the first letter being a vowel you use 'a'.

For example, the word hotel. Used to be more commonly pronounced as 'otel' (following French pronunciation I think?). First sound is a vowel - o - so it would be 'an hotel'. It's now more commonly pronounced to include the aitch sound 'hotel' - its first sound is a consonant so it becomes 'a hotel'.

über pedant

You may have remembered the umlaut, but shouldn't there be a hyphen too?

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/uber

(And now someone's going to out-pedant me and say I should have said "you might" not "you may").

My dictionary (not online) suggests über is used either with or without a hyphen, seemingly at the discretion of the writer. Or sometimes in one word, e.g. übergeek.

I am happy, however, to be corrected by the superior quality Cambridge Dictionary.