Why you should know: The ‘a’ vs ‘an’ conundrum is not about what letter actually begins the word, but instead about how the sound of the word starts.
For example, the ‘h’ in ‘hour’ is silent, so you would say ‘an hour’ and not ‘a hour’. A trickier example is Ukraine: because the ‘U’ is pronounced as ‘You’, and in this case the ‘y’ is a consonant, you would say “a Ukraine” and not “an Ukraine”.
Tip: when in doubt, sound it out(loud).
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That’s happened in french and Italian too then, “une orange” and “un’arancia”. Wild.
Some examples of this phenomenon in French are “un ombril” -> “un nombril” (a navel, from the latin umbilicus and “l’ierre” -> “le lierre” (the ivy, from the latin hedera).
Same with Arabic when Alexander became Skender and Alzheimer’s became zheimers.