To ask you how you say the letter 'H'???

[NowSissyThatWalk]

Okay.
So this may have been done to death, but I am a woman close to the edge.
I pronounce the letter H as 'Aitch', not
pronouncing any 'H' sound at the start.
I have always been told this is the 'right' way to pronounce it, and so it's stuck.
But I seem to never hear anyone ever saying it like this and instead pronounce the 'H', as 'Haitch'.
I can't take much more of it. My DP says 'Haitch' and corrects me every time I don't.
I should LTB shouldn't I????

I accept people saying Haitch nowadays, since becoming aware that it can be a dialect thing. If someone tried to "correct" me from saing aitch they'd get short shrift though!

As honeylulu points out above, lots of letters end rather than begin with the sound they represent. Otherwise we'd have fef, lel, mem, nen, rar, ses and xex. Sounds right, right? Maybe not.

Annie

Yes, and Wubbleyou

Haitch... Should be sent to the next galaxy.... As is the 'please return to MYSELF' (seems to be a common occurrence in wide boy (of both sexes) Estate agents. This makes me stabby and goady....

I say Haitch, and tbh if you want to leave your partner as he says it this way and not aitch there are larger issues than this in your relationship.

There's also c which starts with an s-sound, and g which starts with a j-sound, and y which starts with a w-sound.

Edward, bet you're fun at parties...

I say aitch and I'm both Catholic and from Sheffield...clearly didn't get the memo!

I think it's a shame how people try to excuse things like haitch and would of by saying, "oh it's just language evolving". Well no, not really. It's more of a race to the bottom. hmm

Seriously? A race to the bottom of what? Are you saying that the Irish pronunciation is the bottom? What do you think language is for? All of these things are conventions, not laws. They do change and no amount of Hyacinth Bucket lamenting is going to stop it happening.

I'm in Ireland and in a small part of Ireland some people say kyu for q. Not sure if I spelled that right. The yu part sounds like the start of yuck. I pronounce Q like 'queue'. It does sound strange to be to hear kyu as it doesn't sound anything like how you use Q in actual speech.

Aitch. Correct.

That article I linked to said that it used to be common to pronounce words like hospital and hotel without the h, but Standard English evolved to pronounce the h at the beginning of those words. You do still hear some BBC types saying an hotel, but they'd be considered pedantic nowadays.

I do that and I'm not a "BBC type" - I got it from my Dad who was a Mancunian. I don't speak RP because RP is just another regional accent - one that I don't have, but I may be a pedant. By the way, I don't drop the H on Hotel as a whole - that is a particular form (the An 'otel).

Haitch isn't regional as is clear from the various contributions on here - however that doesn't mean it may be the only version you ever heard growing up wherever you are.

I think it's hilarious that it's apparently one more sign of Catholic persecution - even the dictionaries are against us! ha.

It's a class thing.

I've just remembered the incident of my grandmother and the NATO phonetic alphabet, thanks to this thread. My DM had to learn it for her job (amongst other things obviously) and she was explaining it to DGM.

DGM and DM got into a massive argument discussion about H for Hotel, because DGM was insistent that it was pronounced 'Otel and so how would anyone instantly think 'H'? DM's explanation of how people now mostly say 'Hotel' was met with a cats-bum face and a muttered comment about people having no standards

DH and I say Aitch. The DDs are consistently being taught to say Haitch at school. Maybe it's another thing that's going to become obsolete in our language?

Aitch!

Haitch was hammered out of us as children, as it was 'uneducated' (i.e. incorrect).

Haitch is proper common!!

Aitch (Irish, of Protestant origin). The reception teacher taught my children to say haich and I don't care. They also say fore-head for forehead, and that really irritates me, but they won't say it to rhyme with horrid no matter how often I "correct" them, so I've stopped trying.

How about it's a sectarian AND a regional thing...and a class thing if you're a twat?

How about it's a sectarian AND a regional thing...and a class thing if you're a twat?

This.

Class/uneducated (or thinly veiled racism) thing if you're a twat. Yes.

Can't believe some of the comments on here all over a letter.

Oh, and btw - I'm Catholic and Australian. I went to a school staffed by Irish Catholic nuns!

It is certainly not 'Australian English' to say 'haitch', as someone said upthread.

But why would it matter? You're making it sound like a terrible indictment of your nation!

Huh?

I don't think it's an 'indictment' it's just not true.

Someone suggested you'd find 'haitch' in an Australian dictionary, in support of it being a variation. You wouldn't, and it's not.

It only matters if you think correct English matters, I suppose. I think it does. Others obviously don't. Fair enough.

Sorry, it's just that you sounded so offended! I read it wrong.

To be honest I've never thought of looking up h/aitch in the dictionary as I've never needed to spell a letter or seek its definition. Words beginning with H maybe.

Do people look up Em and Ex and Double you in the dictionary?

Oh, no worries. Sorry, tone hard to read on the Internet, and all that - I was more incredulous than offended!