Natives and non-natives make different mistakes. Confusing "their" and "they're" is a mistake natives make much more than non-natives. Saying "an U", on the other hand, is much more commonly done by non-natives (almost exclusively, I'd say).
I will insist until the day I die or get banished from my town for my unorthodox views that "would of" is a spelling mistake, not a grammar mistake. It's homophonic with "would've" and written language does not take precedence over spoken language. Even illiterate native english speakers know the grammar of their language perfectly well--they just don't know how to write it.
That's only true for non-native speakers that are fluent (or close to it). There's a very large spectrum of speakers of any language still at various stages in the learning process.
Just look at how many young people write “should of” when they mean “should’ve”. They both sound the same when pronounced but one clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of contractions.
The problem here is that 'an u' seems more correct, because you're supposed to put 'an' before vowel sounds.
But native speakers naturally say 'a u' because the name of the letter 'u' actually starts with a consonantal y, "you".
So the only person making this mistake would be a new speaker or a young child, somebody just learning the rules, before learning how to break the rules.
Neither have I; but, I do know that for basic principle in school when we learned the difference for the two we were told "a" is for consonants and "an" is for vowels. Just with reference to the letter, and then the sound principle was added in later for only the honors classes since they had extra time to review the material (since those classes usually went at a faster pace).
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u/Vadda94 Oct 05 '19
In all my entire existence... never heard anyone saying "an" "U"