English is so special

I was writing a report for one of my courses, when I ended up writing "...an universal...". To my surprise, auto correction brings it to "...a universal...". Since this was strange to me (I was sure I was told, if word start with vowel, use "an" instead of "a"), I had to look it up. Results and reasoning after the jump.

Apparantely, I was taught wrong, or taught right and remembered it wrong.

English isn't something you just memorize, which makes it one of the harder subjects to master.

Instead of memorizing vowel beginnings then replacing "a" with "an", you should pronounce the word first. If it SOUNDS like a vowel, then you do the replacement. Otherwise it stays the same.

Here are some examples, since it caught me off guard myself.

Ultimate
- Sounds like "a"ultimate
So its "[an ultimate] human being"

University
- Sounds like "y"university
So its "[a university]"

Heres the problem though. If you aren't fluent in english and have no idea what the word sounds like, then what do you do?

Source: Here.