H "atich" and "haitch" - please explain!

[coppit]

So, the letter H...

"aitch" and "haitch" - are both correct (so you just pronounce it how you like) or is "haitch" actually incorrect.

Thanks!

How on earth to you pronounce sicth ?

I'm Irish too and lived in England for a long time, so started to say aitch to stop people looking down their noses at me. Now I am back in Ireland saying aitch and people probably think I am looking down my nose at them...sigh. Who cares really? Well, obviously you lot do or this wouldn't be pedants corner.
Shaunthesheep, I'm fascinated by the Irish alphabet - I can't remember anyting about it and I went to a Gaelscoil!

eek anything

six - ththththththththththththhhhhh!!

:p

Lady

I say apparent because I have no wish to call you a liar and so am taking your word for this - but, I reiterate, 20 years ago I did not hear anyone saying haitch for aitch except aspirational people getting it wrong and even that was much rarer than it is now. If Irish was doing it all along for different linguistic reasons then I am wrong and I must apologise but, Irish apart, I have no recollection of anyone else doing it. Schools across the country were universal on it - it was "aitch".

As for the question, "is it snobbery", yes it is, but I am only an impostor in the upper middle classes - I grew up dropping my h's and scattering glottal stops all over the place in a proudly working class household. I changed my accent in secondary school so that people wouldn't think I was thick. People who change and then get it wrong are letting the side down twice - once by putting on a mask (as I felt forced to do) and once for letting the mask slip and giving the middle classes can feel superior. If I couldn't maintain the lifelong pretence, I'd rather go back to how I was. (SLIGHTLY tongue in cheek before anyone rips me apart ...)

I say apparent because I have no wish to call you a liar

Gosh, that sounded rather rude. Was it meant to?

LadyGlencoraPalliser I 100% agree with you - it is regional (and I would say probably working class)and very snobbish to say something is wrong when its so widely used. It infuriates me when my DP tells our DD that something she says is pronounced wrongly when if fact she is saying words like me (northern) rather than him (southern). Sadly for him, even though we live down south she still says "glass" and "grass" with an "ass" instead of an "arse"

I HATE that DH pronounces it "haitch", but now that the Irish connection has been pointed out that explains it!

For all these years I thought I had married a commoner, when in fact it was just his Irish mother's influence.

Haitch is wrong; it 'urts my hears to 'ear hit.

"If Irish was doing it all along for different linguistic reasons then I am wrong and I must apologise"

yes, we were, I never even heard it pronounced "aitch" till I moved here

I shall teach DD to pronounce it correctly - as haitch, of course

My DH says Eggzactly. AHHHHHHHH

I cant say I remember too much either tbh. Been over in England so long. Still say 'haitch' tho and always will and pronounce R as orrrrrr and not ahhhhh

What I really want to know tho is why the river Thames is pronounced 'TAMES'

Seriously beginning to think that the rules of English have been made up just to let one set look down or up at other sets but then not being English have no idea who is looking up or down on who

Avril, you need to change your name to AvrilHaitch - or I'll always mispronounce it as AvrilAitch

Or if you really think you are posh in London - Clapham pronounced as "Claamm"

We really, really need David Crystal on for a webchat...

I used to work with someone whose name beginning with haitch/aitch, say Harriet, and she was actually known as Aitch. It always sounded so odd to me. I read the Wiki link and would agree that the pronounciation in Ireland, both North and South is often divided along religious lines, which is likely to be true in Scotland also.

whose name began with gah

"If Irish was" - good lordy, MIFLAW.

It's aitch.

But I have grown up hearing it as haitch. Firstly from my grandmother, who had a yorks / lancs accent, and I have heard plenty of other people use her pronounciation, too. It may well be 'uneducated' but then regional dialects and pronounciations are often also a class issue: 'ain't' is regional, but it's also working class regional.

Now I hear it a lot because almost every person of caribbean background I know says haitch, regardless of education or class.

DS says it from hearing so many people at school say it, including his nursery teacher, his Yr 2 teacher...

I do know aitch is correct, but not sure why people need to get so worked up and condemnatory about the alternative.

youknownothing

though it might make me seem a lame tribute act to Aitch herself, who happens to live nearby

in my head H was so obviously pronounced Haitch, that there was no similarity

Snobbery and/or insecurity Blu. Or, on here, pedantry.

"Correct" is such a funny tem wrt language, anyway - it's not maths, and there's always wiggle room in any social construct. Perhaps better to say it's not current standard English, but even then there's a problem as there is no standard English pronunciation - the dictionaries give a best guess at the most common pronunciation, but I defy most people to go through the OED and not find any words that have a phonetic spelling that doesn't accord to their own pronunciation.

Aitch/Haitch is a shibboleth, and yes, a class/religion thing, and so much of the horror of if does stem from snobbery.

Avril, then I apologise in advance for always getting it wrong in my head.

You could always go for AvrilHeytch to avoid flattering Aitch unduly

Boo

Haitch sounds awful imo.

However, it does make more sense to say Haitch as opposed to Aitch as it sounds more like the letter sound, H!