JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.

The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.

  • xmunkEnglish
    122·
    6 months ago

    “an historic” isn’t incorrect, neither is “a historic” it’s the same issue as “a European” - the a/an choice is based off of pronunciation which is inconsistent because languages diverge (especially english)… the dumb thing is that “an” is written instead of just being written as “a” and optionally pronounced as “an” when followed by a vowel it’d meld into.

    Anyways, both choices are valid. The only truly incorrect thing is that en-uk use “speeded” as the past tense of “speed” and that’s just fucking awful - we can all agree on that. /s

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      checks Google Ngrams

      According to Google Ngrams, in American English, “an historic” and “a historic” were about neck-and-neck until 1935, when “a historic” started steadily pulling ahead. Today, “a historic” is far more common.

      https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historic%2Can+historic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-US-2019&smoothing=3

      In British English, “an historic” had a solid lead for a long time, with “a historic” pulling ahead in 1986, and “a historic” now being significantly much more-common as well.

      https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+historic%2Can+historic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-GB-2019&smoothing=3

      Anyways, both choices are valid. The only truly incorrect thing is that en-uk use “speeded” as the past tense of “speed” and that’s just fucking awful - we can all agree on that. /s

      The one that drives me nuts is “pressurized”. In American English, you “pressure” someone to do something, but “pressurize” something with gas. In British English, you “pressurize” both, which is ambiguous. I mean, given context, I can normally make it out, but it’s just ambiguity that doesn’t need to be there, and it always gives me the wrong mental image to start with.

      • xmunkEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        I had no idea about “pressure”/“pressurize” in en-uk. Thanks for sharing that!

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        In British English, “an historic” had a solid lead for a long time, with “a historic” pulling ahead in 1986, and “a historic” now being significantly much more-common as well.

        Well that explains why my British father with a doctorate in English drilled using “an historic” into me.

    • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
      44·
      6 months ago

      In the US, the H isn’t silent. So we’re taught to say “a historic” and “a hospital”. But for some reason many US journalists like to pretend they went to Eton or something. And NPR is in the US. So I was commenting about how nice it was to see a US-based journalist use US grammar for a change.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        many US journalists like to pretend they went to Eton or something

        I’m not sure that the “h” is silent in Received Pronunciation, either. I know that some British dialects do use silent "h"s, but I though that that was…what, Cockney?

        kagis

        Cockney and others.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping

        H-dropping occurs (variably) in most of the dialects of the English language in England and Welsh English, including Cockney, West Country English, West Midlands English (including Brummie), East Midlands English, most of northern England (including Yorkshire and Lancashire), and Cardiff English.[6] It is not generally found in Scottish English and Irish English. It is also typically absent in certain regions of England and Wales, including Northumberland, East Anglia and parts of North and West Wales.[7]

        H-dropping also occurs in some Jamaican English, and perhaps in other Caribbean English (including some of The Bahamas). It is not generally found in North American English, although it has been reported in Newfoundland (outside the Avalon Peninsula).[8] However, dropping of /h/ from the cluster /hj/ (so that human is pronounced /'juːmən/) is found in some American dialects, as well as in parts of Ireland – see reduction of /hj/.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Southern_England

        Commentators report widespread homogenisation in South East England in the 20th century (Kerswill & Williams 2000; Britain 2002). This involved a process of levelling between the extremes of working-class Cockney in inner-city London and the careful upper-class standard accent of Southern England, Received Pronunciation (RP), popular in the 20th century with upper-middle and upper-class residents. Now spread throughout the South East region, Estuary English is the resulting mainstream accent that combines features of both Cockney and a more middle-class RP.

        Features of working- or middle-class Estuary English, spoken in the counties all around London in the 21st century, include:

        • Not as much h-dropping as Cockney, but still more than RP

        So it sounds like Received Pronunciation, the wealthy crowd, does it the least, but that it’s there to some degree. I think that NPR would be doing it more if they were trying to adopt an accent used by poorer people in England, though, if anything.