word choice - A/An question: 'a humanitarian' or 'an humanitarian'?

What's the proper wording here, neither one sounds right to me:

"Chevra, an humanitarian
organization..."

or

"Chevra, a humanitarian
organization..."

My instinct says it follows the same rule as "an hour", but the 'h' sound is more pronounced in 'humanitarian', so I'm unsure.

Answer

It depends on your accent, because the "a/an" pattern is completely phonological. Some dialects don't pronounce the [h] very strongly or at all in cases where it is followed by [j] (the "y" sound), like in "humanitarian" [hjumæn...], "humor", or "huge". In my dialect, the [h] is definitely pronounced so I would write "a", and I believe this is the most common pronunciation in the US (though I am not certain).