From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2005, she was the indisputable swing justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the justice who held the court’s center for more than a generation, died Friday, the court said in a statement.
Her cause of death was complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. She was 93.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that O’Connor “blazed an historic trail as our nation’s first female justice.”
John Roberts is from the US, and people in the US pronounce “historic” with a hard “h,” as in “hill” or “hidden.” You wouldn’t say “an hill” or “an hidden.”
“An” is appropriately used when proceeding a vowel sound, like in “hour.” “A” is used before constant sounds. “The quarterback made a historic pass.” “There was a historic reason people used to use ‘an’ before the word ‘historic.’”
I’m aware some countries might not pronounce the “h” in any situation, but languages change, and American English made the switch in the 1940s up through the 1990s. Also, I will take every opportunity to make fun of Federalist Society Shill John Roberts.
Yeah fuck John Roberts for sure but you’re not going to convince me that something correct is actually wrong.
If you want to be pedantic, it’s not strictly wrong, but it is not a modern way of speaking or writing, and it hasn’t been for over two decades. And I’m not willing to give John Roberts the benefit of the doubt even for pedantry.
So so you also say “I went to the 'istory museum”, or “this movie is 'istorically accurate”?
Welcome to the wonderful world of language, where the rules are made up, inconsistent, and know to change with time.
Saying “an historic event” vs “a historic event” is an older way of speaking vs a newer way of speaking
I’m old enough to remember being in school taught “an historic event” as an exception to the “‘an’ if the word starts with a vowel sound, ‘a’ if it starts with a consonant sound.”
Personally I find myself using both versions as it was inconsistent during my education on which was the proper one and which wasn’t.