Haitch in HSBC phone message

[ClaudiusTheGod]

Phone HSBC. A voice will thank you for calling Haitch S B C.

This is all kinds of wrong, isn’t it?

Main thing I've taken from this thread is that that the musician Aitch is not H from Steps.

I've only very recently realised they're different people too 😆

just had a listen to H the 2nd. Yeah, bit of a different path to H the 1st.

This.

Hong Kong residents tend to speak Hong Kong English or Cantonese which would both have the aitch sound. I just googled it

It never ceases to amaze me how thinly veiled English imperialism and racism is.

This.

Hong Kong consider their official language to be Chinese:
www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclaw/chapter1.html
The head office for HSBC is in Birmingham, which has the largest Irish population in Britain. It also has a major call centre in west central Scotland and another in east Scotland, both of which have significant Irish populations.

Oh, stop your snobbery. The pronounciation is dependent on where you live!

There’s a huge amount of Bangladeshis where I live but it’d be weird if a national company started using Bangladeshi pronunciation at their call centre

Haitch is so lame! It always makes somebody sound a bit dense even when they’re not…

Well, if "haitch" is wrong, then so is barth, grarss and all those other words the English fuck around with the letter "r" with. Watah and buttah are wrong too.

I thought Mandarin and Cantonese were dialects of the Chinese language? Mandarin orginiating from Bejing and being the most widely used?

How often are people spelling words out that this is something that irritates them?

It never ceases to amaze me how thinly veiled English imperialism and racism is.

it’s racist and imperialist to think it’s pronounced aitch in UK?

HSBC say 'aitch' (officially, obviously many employees might not). It's on their recorded messages and adverts.

Poor old R. Such abuse it gets.

Last time I looked NI was part of the UK

I mean. You could RTFT. It's pronounced Haitch by many in NI and if you think it's acceptable to judge those people for their correct usage then you betray your (sadly common) ignorance of the fragile political situation in your own country.

It's racist and imperialist to think the UK (you actually mean England) is the only way that is correct.

People are getting really cross about such a little thing.

With you OP.
I used to be a quality assessor in a call centre- if an agent pronounced it as 'haitch' instead of 'aitch' when spelling something out, it was an instant mark-down. The guidance was clear.

Same as 'arks' instead of 'ask'. Didn't matter that it was a regional/cultural variation- there has to be a basic professional standard.

Do you not understand that this is a racist policy? You surely didn't enforce it. Surely.

A bloke I work with says ‘hitch’ I asked him to say NHS and he replied en hitch ess…just sounds clunky.

I think that when someone says that you sound dense and all of the other negative things that have been said for speaking in your dialect it is bound to wind you up a bit? Especially when there is already a long history of xenophobia and discrimination towards you.

Actually PP means certain parts and classes of England.

Almost all language and pronunciation "rules" are about keeping people in their place. It's the Mitford U and non U thing.