An Before Vowels

Some teachers blindly teach (and pupils blindly learn) the rule that the indefinite article an should be used before all nouns beginning in vowels.

This needs to be qualified: an is used before nouns beginning in vowel sounds — so the rule applies to pronunciation rather than spelling.

New Paper columnist Santokh Singh gets only one out of five attempts above (27 November 2008) right — a Eurasian, because the noun begins /ju/ and not in a vowel. Either he doesn’t know the correct rule or he pronounces Eurasian wrongly.