"Aitch" is definitely still very much in use in UK - among older people, particularly.

Dear confused,

Sorry to have to add to your mental confusion but my dad, who is English, is 62 and he made sure that I pronounced my haitches. I don't know what you would classify as 'old' but 62 is a fine line. Maybe a pre-war generation used it???

Hi Dr. Bill! I knew you weren't referring to us as being a joke. I was playing on your words earlier on!!! No offence taken!!!

Oh, it's always been used (always? a long time, that - but since C19, at the very least)
However, in Southern England in the '40s and '50s, it was definitely looked down on as "lower class" and boys at my school were castigated, but not actually chastised, by the masters for using "haitch" rather than "aitch."

(I don't classify 62 as old, BTW, for very good personal reasons )

The acceptance of "haitch," as I say, appears to be a fairly modern thing in UK.

I'd carry that through into the 70's/80's, RC, as it was definitely frowned on at my schools as well. My impression is that in the UK it's a very regional thing, so haitch could be the accepted form in one region and aitch the form in another. Maybe you just find haitch being used more widely as people move around more and it spreads from one region to the next?

I think the standard Canadian pronunciation is "aitch". BUT. People who live on the West Coast of Newfoundland (not to be confused with the Real West Coast = Vancouver) seem to move the initial 'h' around. This is for some reason associated in my mind with being French-Canadian. There are a lot of French communities in that part of the island. Let me give some examples:

I say "onion", they say "honion".
I say "aitch", they say "haitch".
I say "horrible", they say "orrible".
This next one is common for all Newfoundlanders: I have a friend named "Hugh" which they pronounce "you".

And so on. So what we need to know, at least for the Canadian trend, is whether or not belM says "aitch" or "haitch", "ockey" or "hockey", "onion" or "honion". And what she hears around her in Québec.

Way back in the early 60's there was a wildly successful comedy program brought to Broadway from across the pond called Beyond the Fringe (still available, on CD). I think this was this show that included a(n?) hilarious take-off on the OT Jacob-and-Esau tale. An oft-repeated line went, as I recall, "My brother Esau is an hairy man." Distinctly hairy, not "airy. Big hoots from the audience.

Definitely Haitch in English Québec. That is how we are taught to say in in grade school.

You are right about French pronunciation of English words though. For some reason Hs are added/pronounceed in front of vowel words like Honion and remove them in front of H words like ockey. I don't understand it one bit.

Haitch/aitch story.
A couple of years ago I was watching the U.S. national spelling bee (don’t y’all dare call me a geek) and the animator asked one little girl to spell aitch. “Aitch” she said with confusion. “Aitch” he said with authority.

“Um, can I get a definition please?” again with some confusion. I believe he said something like “aitch is the eight letter of the alphabet.” So, she, being from non-continental U.S. said “Haitch??” “aitch” he says. Poor thing got it wrong.

Haitch/aitch story.
A couple of years ago I was watching the U.S. national spelling bee (don’t y’all dare call me a geek) and the animator asked one little girl to spell aitch. “Aitch” she said with confusion. “Aitch” he said with authority.
“Um, can I get a definition please?” again with some confusion. I believe he said something like “aitch is the eight letter of the alphabet.” So, she, being from non-continental U.S. said “Haitch??” “aitch” he says. Poor thing got it wrong.


That doesn't seem like it would be a legal word for a spelling bee. You can't definitively spell letters, they are what they are. That's like trying to spell "a". Is it ai, aye, ae, aeh?

About "a/an h-", In the three Jane Austen books that I just finished reading, I noticed that all words starting with "h" had the article "an", no matter how they were pronounced.

You can't definitively spell letters

'course you can Jazzo ~ el, ee, tee... [notsmile]

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I say "onion", they say "honion". I say "aitch", they say "haitch". I say "horrible", they say "orrible".

Some of you may be familiar with a riddle. I was about to give a link, but since the links include the answer, I instead risk verticality to reprint it here for those who may not have seen it and wish to puzzle it out.

There is a poetic riposte, which I will post after giving puzzlers a chance to work on this enigma.

'Twas whispered in Heaven, 'twas muttered in Hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;
On the confines of earth 'twas permitted to rest,
And in the depths of the ocean its presence confessed;
'Twill be found in the sphere when 'tis riven asunder,
Be seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder;
'Twas allotted to man with his earliest breath,
Attends him at birth and awaits him at death,
Presides o'er his happiness, honor, and health,
Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth.
In the heaps of the miser 'tis hoarded with care,
But is sure to be lost in his prodigal heir.
It begins every hope, every wish it must bound,
With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs is crowned;
Without it the soldier and seaman may roam,
But woe to the wretch who expels it from home.
In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,
Nor e'er in the whirlwind of passion be drowned;
'Twill soften the heart; but though deaf to the ear,
It will make him acutely and instantly hear.
But, in short, let it rest like a delicate flower;
Oh, breathe on it softly, it dies in an hour.
--Catherine Fanshawe

>That doesn't seem like it would be a legal word for a spelling bee.

I know. But sometimes, while doing crosswords they will ask you to spell out a letter so I took it in stride. My hubby was flabbergasted. His argument, like yours is that the letter is spelled by the letter H=H B=B… And that it doesn’t make sense to use a whole pile of other letters to spell the letter you are spelling (wow, that is a mouthful).

The crowd all thought is was funny also.

To me also, haitch is a common but ill-educated pronunciation, and really marks someone out. I'm not aware of it spreading recently; I can't say I've noticed more people saying it.

An Irish friend surprised me by telling me he'd explicitly been taught to say haitch in school.

The name appears to come from trying to say H in a language (late Latin then Old French) that no longer had an H sound: from ha to aha to ahha to akkha to akka, at which point it rhymed with vacca 'cow' and like it changed k to ch: French vache, which would be pronounced vaitch by now if we'd borrowed it into Middle English.

The choice of a(n) before sounded h is based on stress: where the first syllable is stressed, it's definitely a full consonant, so a hat, a home, a history.

When unstressed, usage varies. The older method was to use an: an historic event. I think most of us now would say a historic event.

My brother Esau being an hairy man is clearly so said (Peter Cook, wasn't it?) for comic effect, and I doubt it had been seriously said before a stressed syllable for hundreds of years.

The OED in fact says it was so used until after 1700. After scanning Jane Austen long enough to get the suspicion that she was avoiding the issue, I found 'a house'.

>To me also, haitch is a common but ill-educated pronunciation,

That just goes to show how different the English language can be from one place to another. As I said, that is how we were taught to say our Hs while reciting our A-B-Cs

There would definitely be raised eyebrows if someone said aitch in English Québec and it would be evident that the person was an outsider - YET - move on over to Newfoundland and you would clearly be an outsider if you pronounced it haitch...and we're in the same country.

I wonder...do you think this type of variation came about as a means of differentiating between clans/groups of people. Historically, people have always tried to mark “those guys” from “us guys” because stripped down naked we pretty much look the same. Pronunciation, like clan colours would be a way of doing this.

ASp, I may be misremembering but did you not study languages in University? What do you think?

I was watching the U.S. national spelling bee and the animator asked one little girl to spell...

bel, what does "animator" mean in this context? Your usage is unfamiliar to me, and we may have here another example of differing usages across national boundaries.

Following on from NicholasW...

"Haitch" is quite prevalent in Australia and seems to have crossed all socio-economic boundaries.

It is almost a litmus test for Catholicism (and a Catholic education) in this country. Inevitably the Brothers are/were of Irish stock and, if they weren't, they were taught in turn by Irish Catholics. And so the usage spreads.

I've mentioned before that the playing of Rugby League rather than Rugby Union is a similar litmus test. League is dominant in Catholic schools, whilst Union is the domain of the protties. One of the more powerful League teams in Brisbane, Queensland competition is even called Brothers. Guess which foot they lead with!

stales

Found this, while searching for words, on the "chiminations" thread as offered, again, by the venerable NicholasW, under the subject Vox Latina:

Oh I do swear by Vox Latina, a thoroughly invaluable slim volume. The one problem I have is the apparent preservation of H in French: after all, virtually all H-initial borrowings from Norman French have a pronounced H in Modern English. (Very few exceptions: 'honour', 'heir', 'hour', and dialectally 'herb'.) The simplest explanation for this is that Latin H stayed pronounced in Gaul until past the Conquest, and then disappeared in France but not in England. However, all the other evidence suggests that H disappeared very early, even as Vox Latina says, within the Classical period.

Now a handful of spelling H's could be turned into pronounced ones by scholarly influence, but the whole lot? So Middle English azard, Ector, eritage, ermit, ideous, omage, Omer, orizon, oroscope, ospital, ost, uman, umble, ydraulic, Ymen, ypolydian, and a great many more all of which could have occurred in Chaucer, were spelt with a silent H (in most cases: Ector, eremite, umble survive without), and at some point the spelling influenced the pronunciation and caused the insertion of an H? It sounds so unlikely -- yet I suppose that's what must have happened.

...because stripped down naked we pretty much look the same.

I was going to cross-thread this, but I wouldn't decide with which thread to cross, there being way too many uncovering this issue. So I decided not to.

In New England it's pretty much aitch, but then we call the sister of Mom or Dad aunt, not ant!

You can't definitively spell letters

Dave Allen tells this one. Working-class bloke walks into an interview, and the snooty interviewer asks him his name.

"Smif."

Interviewer gives him a dirty look, and says lingeringly, "How do you spell it?"

"S M I T H."

"Smith," the interviewer enunciates sourly, writing it down. "First name?"

"Arfur."

"How do you spell it?"

"A R T H U R."

"Arthur," the interviewer says very distinctly. "Age?"

"Fir'y-free."

"How do you spell it?"

"You don't spell it, it's a bleedin' number!"

I do miss Dave Allen. He was probably the funniest man in Britain in his day. His sketches, especially Irish funeral sketches, were priceless.

I'm with MaxQ on the aitch issue.

While most thing about town are almost back to normal, the subway continues to be disrupted-- you can never be sure what any given train will do.

Friday, the train i was on was switched from a local to an express (good for me!) and the conductor announced
"This train is becoming an express. The next stop will be turdy-tee turd (33rd)street."

i didn't think anyone in NY still said it that way.. (it was made popular in a Pre WWII comedy skit!) it made me smile!

>"You don't spell it, it's a bleedin' number!"



That took me completely by surprise!!!

i didn't think anyone in NY still said it that way.

Well, Helen...he must've been from Joisey!

Maybe Whit, but turdy tee turd and turd, (33rd and 3rd) in Brooklyn was the location of the Naval Health Station, where inductees had to report for physicals. it's close to the old brooklyn navy yards. if it has an association with joisey, it's just since they built the guinea gang plank. (known out side of NY/NJ as the Verenzano bridge.)

and i've always thought it, along with turlet (as Archie Bunker would say) as being low class 3rd generation irish--mostly brooklynese, but i heard turlet as a child in the bronx.

i heard turlet as a child

When I was little, I had a friend who said turlet. I don't know what her background was. But we were pretty far from the Bronx!

Also, in Turkish, it's "tuvalet" (too-vah-let). Kind of like turlet, kind of like toilet, kind of like toilette. I think it must be adapted from the French, as many Turkish words are.

and i've always thought it, along with turlet (as Archie Bunker would say) as being low class 3rd generation irish--mostly brooklynese, but i heard turlet as a child in the bronx.

Yup. The Irish drop their 'h's when pronouncing 'th' words. Thanks becomes Tanks and Thing becomes Ting. Father and Mother are pronounced (in Dublinese anyway) as Far-dah and Mud-dah but I don't know abot an Irish influence for turlet. It's usually pronounced toilah here.

The Irish drop their 'h's when pronouncing 'th' words.

This is a characteristic of Newfoundland speech as well, but then with the Irish background here, that's no surprise. Also, the hard "th" sound like in "the" becomes "d", so "the" is "duh", and "there" is "dere".

Did ya know that the winners of last years Tree Felling contest were

t'ree fellers from Dublin?

(ain't dat roight, G'Ted?)

This is a characteristic of Newfoundland speech as well, but then with the Irish background here, that's no surprise. Also, the hard "th" sound like in "the" becomes "d", so "the" is "duh", and "there" is "dere".

dat's right!

dat's right!

dat's roight?

dat's roight? = Dublinese

dat's right! (usually pronounced 'das riiiiiiggghhh') = everywhere else

dat's right! (usually pronounced 'das riiiiiiggghhh') = everywhere else

tanks fer clearin dat up, Rubrick! [ungrin]

Also, the hard "th" sound like in "the" becomes "d", so "the" is "duh", and "there" is "dere".

So too here in Chicago, among certain groups who happen to be of particular politcal power. Thus the mayor of our city is oft referred to in the press as Hizzoner Da Mayor, and Mike Ditka, when coaching our football team Da Bears, was nicknamed Da Coach.

My dictionary spelled it aitch while explaining the etymology of Amazon.

I finally worked out why the title of this thread - "H for dropping" - was bothering me so. The emotional part of me (wherever that may be) was reading "H-bomb for dropping". Anyone else have that problem? [thinking-this-highly-unlikely-e]

I finally worked out why the title of this thread - "H for dropping" - was bothering me so. The emotional part of me (wherever that may be) was reading "H-bomb for dropping". Anyone else have that problem? [thinking-this-highly-unlikely-e]

Sorry, the flash blinded me, and I'm still trying to deal with the noise pollution caused by the clicking of the Geiger counter ... I just thought that spring had arrived early!