Hi Minh,

On Aug 29, 12:30 pm, Minh Nguyen <nguyenmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> and you can safely put "a" before a number whose spelling begins with
> a consonant. However, depends on where you are, people do say "an
> hundred-cochain" with a silent "h", even though at least in Australia
> it's "a hundred-cochain" where the letter "h" is not silent in
> pronunciation.

Gosh, that's difficult!

Concerning "h": I was told that here in Ireland, the children in
school learn to spell "h" like "heitsh", not like "eitsh".

And wouldn't it officially be "one hundred", not just "hundred"? So,
is it then "an 100-cochain"? But this sounds odd to me, because my
feeling is that "a one hundred" is easier to pronounce than "an one
hundred".

But even if the rule were as simple as "use 'an' if and only if the
number starts with a vowel": Is there a function (or an easy
algorithm) that answers whether a number starts with a vowel?

John Palmieri suggested 8, 11, 18, 80-89, and I guess 1 also starts
with a vowel (but really "an one-cochain"??).

Anyway, thank you for your answers, although I am still kind of
clueless...

Cheers,
Simon

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