Saying haitch.

[Chunkymenrock]

I almost never hear anyone saying aitch anymore. It's so infuriating! There is no such word as haitch. Am I alone in feeling so irritated? 😕

Toddle off, @RubySlippers123. You aren’t Irish and don’t get to pronounce on dialects of which you are not a speaker. Makes you look a tad bigoted.

How is aitch even a word? It's surely not- so how can there be debate about how to spell it? It's just a spoken form of the letter h.

How on earth do you ever need to write it- we never write other letter names as words, for example we never have any need to write eff or ell? Stupid argument!

[quote Auroreforet]@MindyStClaire well as I am a Catholic with an Irish father I score 2 out of 3 so perhaps I'm looking down on myself! I still prefer Aitch.

As someone else says it's more that I'm old.[/quote]
I think you're missing the point that this kind of snobbery can have very unpleasant roots, even if it's not what's at the forefront of your mind when you use them.

And preferring to use one word or pronunciation due to your dialect is one thing. Declaring that the usage of another dialect is incorrect or unacceptable is something else entirely. It really doesn't reflect well on you.

@MedicineHat

Now I remember why I don't come here often. So much of this pedantry is just thinly veiled bigotry and judgement.

Yup. Anti-Irish racism is still unfortunately quite common in the UK.

Although I might in fact write eff off

To the aitch pedants

"And then received wisdom shifted, again: by 1858, if I wanted to speak correctly, I should have said "erb", "ospital" and "umble"."

So you say erb in keeping with your aitch?

I doubt it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2013/nov/04/letter-h-contentious-alphabet-history-alphabetical-rosen?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

You do realise you don’t own the language, right? It is standard pronunciation in Ireland and elsewhere. Neither haitch nor aitch are incorrect.

People declaring that aitch is the only correct pronunciation and that anyone who says haitch must be ignorant, are really showing themselves up as being very narrow minded, insular, and just a tad bigoted.

That was directed at @RubySlippers123 who boldly declared that haitch was incorrect.

Has anyone said ‘Haitchers gonna haitch’ yet?

@BordelDeMerde

"Yup. Anti-Irish racism is still unfortunately quite common in the UK"

I don't think that's fair. I'm Irish, lived and had a successful career here for 35 years.

The aitch thing isn't anti-Irish. It's just a ridiculous nonsensical affect that has no identifiable basis.

That folks use to bolster themselves at the expense of others. I.e. snobbery, and which can be dismantled with the merest glance at google.

Laughable really.

[quote AhNowTed]@BordelDeMerde

"Yup. Anti-Irish racism is still unfortunately quite common in the UK"

I don't think that's fair. I'm Irish, lived and had a successful career here for 35 years.

The aitch thing isn't anti-Irish. It's just a ridiculous nonsensical affect that has no identifiable basis.

That folks use to bolster themselves at the expense of others. I.e. snobbery, and which can be dismantled with the merest glance at google.

Laughable really.[/quote]
I spent 25 years in England and experienced a fair bit. Glad you didn’t, obviously, but in my experience it’s certainly not particularly rare. Most likely to come from older white men, rarer in cities.

@RubySlippers123

"It is incorrect."

Says who?

@tangone

Shakespeare must have had no social class - he made words up. Commoner.

Yeah, dope 😂

Declaring that the usage of another dialect is incorrect or unacceptable is something else entirely. It really doesn't reflect well on you.
@MindyStClaire well it wouldn't if that's what I'd said.

embarrassed to say I have never ever heard of this, and my name begins with H! Trying to work out which way I say it!!

Irish family. Haitch it is and I am unashamed.

I hate it with a passion. I can regularly be found shouting AITCH at the TV! I am outraged that Journalists, for whom the tools of their trade are words, don’t bloody pronounce it right!

@AnnieSnap

I hate it with a passion. I can regularly be found shouting AITCH at the TV! I am outraged that Journalists, for whom the tools of their trade are words, don’t bloody pronounce it right!

That's quite an extreme reaction to a word that people from different English speaking counties and countries say legitimately differently.

"pronounce it right"?

Do tell?

Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The Oxford English Dictionaryy says the original name of the letter was [ˈaha] in Latin; this became [ˈaka] in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French [atʃ], and by Middle English was pronounced [aːtʃ]. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Languagee derives it from French hache from Latin haca or hic. Anatoly Liberman suggests a conflation of two obsolete orderings of the alphabet, one with H immediately followed by K and the other without any K: reciting the former's ..., H, K, L,... as [...(h)a ka el ...] when reinterpreted for the latter ..., H, L,... would imply a pronunciation [(h)a ka] for H.[7]

With all the talk of social acceptability I wonder what some pp would make of my Sarf London accent, we definitely say aitch while dropping our ts and aitches

@AnnieSnap

I hate it with a passion. I can regularly be found shouting AITCH at the TV! I am outraged that Journalists, for whom the tools of their trade are words, don’t bloody pronounce it right!

I think you’ll find the BBC Pronunciation Unit considers it a ‘legitimate variant’.

Maybe consider a new hobby.

Haitch is a very sturdy element of Hiberno-English and also iirc Australian English because it was influenced by teachers of Irish origin.

I'd love to get to the bottom of the horror of it. I for one am happy to see it making inroads.

@alexdgr8, I agree with your thoughts at 20:44 on Sunday.

YY to 'Little England'.

@Doggiedementia, YYY to your posts.

It's astonishing to me to see the lack of awareness of the bigotry underlying their attitudes.

Quite the eye opener in fact.

What is this madness up thread about pronouncing J as Jeye, to rhyme with eye? Surely it's jay as in day as in pay. I'm so confused