To be irritated when people on television say "Haitch"?

[ViscountessPetitLapin]

This wretched woman just said "Haitch Emm Ess" (HMS) and it drives me NUTS!

My friend who has the broadest of broadest yorkshire accent always says aitch and gets really cross when others don't.

I think an Irish accent is confusing in England as it seems classless. I am from NI and worked in England in the eighties - as I am very posh (!) and don't yell like Ian Paisley, I was assumed to be Scottish. (Hate drawring for drawing).

But Xenia - it is normal to say "haitch" in some areas so schools there ^wouldn't" correct it....

I moved around the English speaking world growing up and now I have the most bizarre accent that even I, myself, have ever heard (and I hear myself everyday).

As I went through different school systems where I invariably sounded odd to the majority of other children, I picked up different ways of saying things to fit in. Now in my thirties, I hear my own accent change according to who I am talking to, like it has a mind of its own and I can't seem to do anything about it!

I always find these threads interesting because they seem relevant to my own experiences of hearing many different pronounciations for the same words around the world - and illustrate the power that language has to unite and divide. Hmmmmm. [insert reflective emoticon here]

(Have always said "aitch", though - never encountered "haitch" til arrived in UK)

Ye Gods! Is this thread still going??

(i think she did, fio.)

Gay Chicken - GAME ON!

F, I'm not gay so we'd be doomed.

Yes, language and accent is fascinating. In my mother's classes where I am sure the local children would say you was, drawring, haitch she and other teachers helped the children hungely be telling them it was wrong to say drawring, the word does not contain that extra r etc. She was going them a massive favour. Some of you might say it is better instead not to tell children and let them think whoever they mix with later will not take a view on them based on whether they say haitch, drawring, you was etc.

i'm still very confused as to why it's aitch and not haitch to ye though.... i mean the letter is pronounced huh

rantum... i grew up in holland, germany, dublin, cork and have irish family in mayo. i also have a bizarre accent, even americans think i'm american and i often changed the way i said particular words at school because people would mock me.

i know what you mean about picking an accent to fit the person you're speaking to. up in mayo i have a very strong country accent, speaking to foreign nationals i speak with a foreign accent and down in cork if i was drunk i sounded just like any other cork knacker!

Surely langer not knacker if you are in Cork PT?!

Caaaark.

like pacific instead of specific, god I hate that one. I must say that I have never been told that haitch was wrong, I think I say aitch but dp says I say haitch! He didn't know there was anything wrong with it either, you learn something new everyday!

knackers are the scumbags in tracksuits who felt the need to pick a fight with me every night outside the clubs

langers are all the rest of them (well the women are a bunch of manky buores )

Some of dd1's friends are semiknackers - only in Corcaigh.

PT - in the Italian alphabet 'H' is pronounced 'acca' so I would suggest that as Italian is a derivation of Latin that the English took the rule from Latin as well.

One of dd2's classmates is called Holly but her dad calls her Haitch!
Why?

Why not? It's a nickname.

So if you are saying ho hum, do you say o um? I am going to have to listen to the radio 4 news now.

You can say honest, you can say hallway. The fact a word starts with a letter doesn't necessarily impact on the pronunciation of that later (ie psycho )

My DS is Henry and I call him Aitch... but that's just a tribute to the BLW goddess

FYI:

H-dropping - the deletion of the initial sound in words such as happy and house first provoked comment in the eighteenth century and has historically been avoided by the middle classes. Nonetheless it's a feature of popular speech that distinguishes speakers in the whole of England (apart from Tyneside and Northumberland) and Wales from those in Scotland, Ireland and indeed the rest of the English-speaking world, who retain their 's. Many speakers consciously seeking to avoid dropping an insert one inappropriately and thus produce oft-caricatured pronunciations such as honest with the intact. This phenomenon is known as hypercorrection and probably explains the increasingly common pronunciation of the letter aitch as if it were haitch.

Jonnie Robinson, Curator, English accents and dialects, British Library

I can see happy and hotel having different pronounciations, but I cannot say 'otel' in Ireland or people would think I had gone a bit odd! But ho hum are noises. In letterland Hairy Hat Man (I think he is somebody else now) was huh.

..ah yes, hypercorrection. Good explanation.
The other interesting one as someone said below is "u" - amusing on a U/non-U thread may be.

How you pronounce "assume" - assooom or how most of us do or is that assoom just a US pronunciation and which "su" words does it apply to. I don't say "super", I say "super" if I said it at all. But I'd say "supine" not "soopine".

The way people say "super" in Yorkshire is:

"raaahhht good."

My dh is from yorkshire and he says 'reeeet good' a la Craiiig David