Obama admits reference to Auschwitz was wrong
“I had an uncle who was … part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps,” Obama said.
Obama said, “A uncle…” not “An uncle.” You have your quote wrong. Obama made a gramatical error that you are correcting. He is all over the radio and TV saying the statement incorrectly. Why aren’t you quoting him the way he said it?
J.F.
We do not intentionally clean up grammatical errors for anybody. Various news organizations reported the quote with “a uncle” or “an uncle” - some used both versions. You can see here, as the reader points out, Obama did say “a uncle.”
REUTERS photo by Rick Wilking
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guess we all have little too much time on our hands….
- Posted by GiovannaMany tutors say that the indefinite article ‘a’ is used before consonants, while ‘an’ is used before vowels. In mmany cases, this is quite true:
A cat An apple
A dog An elephant
A house An ice-cream
A man An orange
A woman An umbrella
BUT the choice between a and is inextricably linked to pronunciation and NOT spelling. Thus, ‘a’ is used before a consonant sound, even if it is written as a vowel, and an is used before a vowel sound, even if it is written as a consonant:
A uniform
A one-sided game
An hour
An NCO
Many people annunciate ‘an’, not ‘a’, before any words beginning with the letter ‘h’ when nindeed the first syllable is NOT stressed:
An hotel (a hotel is more common)
An historical novel (a historical … is more common)
When abbreviation takes an article, it usually depends upon the pronunciation of the first letter of any abbreviation:
An NCO
- Posted by The Truth Is...A UN spokesman.
It might not be relevant to this particular Obamian faux pas, but the media in general (starting at the level of the wire services) wants this man to be president and the bias seeps through in the news.
Observer
- Posted by Brad BrzezinskiPuh-lee-eez! If that’s the only thing people have to worry about these days, things must be in great shape. Unbelievable.
- Posted by Erik Kirschbaum