Haitch AIBU

[beluga425]

...to want to scream "it's aitch!!!!!!"

FFS

I knew someone with a dog called Haitch "like the letter haitch"

@sqoosh - depends on the letter. Lots of Irish people say "tree" instead of "three". But at least we don't throw random letters into words, like the r in drawing for some English 😁

My DH is Irish. It's still aitch.

Rinceoir "They don’t pronounce the “r” is words and have long “a” sounds so- scarf becomes scaw-f and laugh is law-f"

No, scarf = scahf and laugh = lahf.

Where I'm from in the south east, scarf and laugh most definitely rhyme. And we don't ever pronounce them lawf and scawf as suggested upthread.

Why do people find it so difficult to grasp pronounciation varies Depending on where you're from? Accents are never wrong. It's ignorant to tell someone they speak incorrectly. You can speak well whilst still having a regional accent.

Just as insomniac said it.

Apologies perhaps lahf/scahf is a better approximation- was trying to convey the longer a sound, I would use a short a in ah. There’s a tool dictionaries use that I should try to master!

I don’t think any of these pronounciations are wrong btw- as I said upthread I love hearing different accents!

shinitzel your Irish DH must be vaire posh.. I'm Irish and only the vaire posh people say aitch

What I don't get is why people can not understand that many of us speak differently. We all have different accents and grew up in different places.. mind boggling I know

also the Irish shouldn't even be speaking English, as we had our own language once upon a time

Oh and you are being VU op

I'm 100% made in Ireland but now live in London and I switch fluidly between aitch and haitch, depending on where I am. It's not that hard!

Grew up singing the alphabet with a haitch. Aitch is my go to these days though. I have the H in my reasonably rare Irish name that foxes everyone (both Irish and English) so spell it countless times like an automaton.

How do people find it acceptable to be so openly snobby about a different pronunciation?

It is just that. A different pronounciiation.

Do get over yourselves.

YES. I judge people massively who think saying haitch is correct.

I think it's almost as bad as 'we would of' or 'we was'. Ugh!

In NI and some other parts of the UK Haitch is RC and Aitch is protestant. Generations or people in UK have been educated by Irish nuns so have adopted haitch.

I also hate Aks.

I judge people massively who are too dim to realise that regional variations of pronunciation exist and try to make out that people who say things differently are somehow beneath them.

I dont give a fuck if someone says aitch or haitch because either way is easily understood.

What @araiwa said.

@theymademejoin I’m from Surrey. In my accent there is no R in scarf. But I’m not some kind of crazy mad outlier - they rhyme according to the OED, their phonetic structure is the same.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/scarf

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/laugh

They both end with ɑːf

Not that I think the dictionary has the definitive pronunciation of things (unlike a lot of this thread, I understand that regional variations are a perfectly acceptable and wonderful thing!) but you’re acting like it’s impossible for them to rhyme, whereas actually, they rhyme for a lot of people.

What’s so frustrating about this thread is that professional linguists would be the first people to point out that language changes over time and there is no ‘correct’ pronunciation. But snobs will always exist, alas.

"I judge people massively who are too dim to realise that regional variations of pronunciation exist and try to make out that people who say things differently are somehow beneath them. "

This.

Look people, seriously calm down. How often do you actually hear people say haitch to be this annoyed?! There are bigger issues out there, namely 'alot' and 'could of'. Pick your battles!

I dont like it for the simple reason that it reminds me of useless dinnerladies who never dealt with any kind of bullying properly. They said haitch.

It is SOOOOOO annoying!

Listen to the OED sound clip of how to pronounce it here:

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/h

You're welcome.

"How often do you actually hear people say haitch to be this annoyed?!"

I live in Hertfordshire and it is commonly pronounced haitch by many people (though not all) round here. I say aitch but was brought up elsewhere. However, I don't care how people say it - if you were annoyed by it you would be annoyed much of the time!

I am also capable of understanding how scarf and laugh would not rhyme in many accents, though they do in mine

I switch between the two, but I'd go out of my way to say haitch to piss off a snotty English person. How do you feel about j-eye, OP?

Oyy that recording exists, but there is an acceptance that language evolves and the British Library holds different regional/age pronunciations, for all sorts of words.

I always wondered why the US said "erb", rather than herb and why Haitch has come back.

Taken from a 2010 BBC article.
"One suggestion is that it touches on a long anxiety in English over the letter aitch. In the 19th Century, it was normal to pronounce hospital, hotel and herb without the h. Nowadays "aitch anxiety" has led to all of them acquiring a new sound, a beautifully articulated aitch at the beginning"
"Now, according to the British Library, evidence suggests that for people under the age of 35, it is becoming the favoured pronunciation."

"One exhibit is the BBC's guide to pronunciation from 1928. In it, it informs announcers that pristine rhymes with wine, respite is pronounced as if there were no e, combat is cumbat, finance was finn-ance. Even then some of the suggestions were becoming archaic. Not only is housewifery no longer pronounced huzzifry, it is almost entirely obsolete as a word.

So if the OP and many on this thread had there way, we wouldn't be speaking in the way we do today.

The article goes on to point out that they changed the accents for the costume drama South Riding and others because we now wouldn't accept them in their original format.

Love that the thread started with the expected Racism, that only the White British way, is correct.

It's similar to the French pronunciation 'ash' so I assume that is where it comes from. I say aitch because that's what we were taught about 50 years ago - and that only ignorant people said haitch. However language evolves over time so there is no need to get prissy over it.

Everyone I know from a Caribbean background says Haitch.

Scarf does not rhyme with laugh because laugh is pronounced 'laff '