Wednesday 22 May 2013

Was Charles Williams the key Inkling? An hypothesis outlined...

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http://tinyurl.com/pq2rp9e
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4 comments:

dearieme said...

I know that all Englishmen drop some "h"s but many drop only a few. My guess is that you don't drop the leading "h" in hypothesis (or history, or hotel ...). If so, your use of an expression such as "an hypothesis" is therefore, I put it to you, silly.

Bruce Charlton said...

But one does, in fact, drop this particular aitch - so taint silly...

Wm Jas said...

Actually, according to Google Ngrams, "a hypothesis" overtook "an hypothesis" in popularity even earlier in Britan than in America (in 1895 and 1934, respectively).

Bruce Charlton said...

As editor of a journal with Hypotheses in its title, and reviewer of about twenty hypotheses per week, I got fairly used to using this word - it became a habit. I think I picked it up from seeing John Betjeman on TV when a teenager - he always used to say "an 'otel".