Was "an unicorn" ever correct?
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Chapters
00:00 Was &Quot;An Unicorn&Quot; Ever Correct?
00:18 Accepted Answer Score 29
00:57 Thank you
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Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------
Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Unforgiving Himalayas Looping
--
Chapters
00:00 Was &Quot;An Unicorn&Quot; Ever Correct?
00:18 Accepted Answer Score 29
00:57 Thank you
--
Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...
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Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...
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Tags
#grammaticality #articles
#avk47
ACCEPTED ANSWER
Score 29
No, it's not a typo. Words starting with u started with a diphthong until the 18th century. This was part of the Great Vowel Shift. The vowel started changing from /yː/ (its original vowel in French1) in Middle English, migrated through several diphthongs, and ended up at /juː/ sometime around the 18th century.
1 At least the upper classes, who were descended from French-speaking Normans, used the original French vowel /y/ for French words spelled with 'u' in Early Middle English. I don't know whether there's any evidence for how the lower classes pronounced this.