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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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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'.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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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?
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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old hand
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old hand
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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
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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.
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addict
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addict
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...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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In New England it's pretty much aitch, but then we call the sister of Mom or Dad aunt, not ant!
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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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!"
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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