While writing my personal statement, I presumed that the phrase should be “an one-year course” because of the vowel “o” in “one”. However, right after doing a quick search on Google, I saw that “a one-year course” delivered way far more results. I don’t know why, please help me explain this confusion!
Hi Quan,
We have to use “a” in stead of “an”
Because we use “a” or “an” before a noun is due to pronunciation of following phoneme.
“one” is pronounced /w^n/. /w/is a consonant so you have to use “a”.
Good luck!
To repeat Giang’s comment, do not look at what the letter is, but rather how it is pronounced.
You use “an” before many abbreviations like FBI or NGO because you say “eff-bee-eye” and “en-gee-oh,” both of which start with vowel sounds.
Hi Quan
Most of the time you need “an” when the next word begins with A, E, I, O, or U. However, you cannot rely only on the way a word is spelled because the use of the article “an” is based on pronunciation, not on spelling.
- an experience
- a unique experience (The first letter in the word unique sounds like the word “you”)
- an umbrella
- an ugly house
- a house
- an hour (The letter “H” is not pronounced at all in the word hour.)
- a half an hour
- a submarine
- an SOS (“SOS” is pronounced “es-oh-es”)
- a bandit
- a one-armed bandit (The word one is pronounced the same as won)
.
thanks for your answers. I got it 