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!

misshardbroom - like you, I have family from Yorkshire and Lancashire (and Shropshire, Newcastle, London and Portsmouth) and it is not the case that everybody pronounces it "haitch" there. We must just be well-educated.

Am I mis-reading some posts, or is there some of that bizarre inverse snobbery going on here, in that people know perfectly well that the correct pronounciation is aitch, but choose to assert their (presumably) less-educated origins by saying "haitch"?

No, it's fair enough. I ditched a guy for not liking asparagus... well, more that he was unwilling to try anything other than 'ordinary' vegeatbles.

I'm sure in the same way that the 'haitch' thing hid some darker secrets and that is what you subconsciously recognised when you dumped him.

Irish origins here, and it's Haitch for me. American DCs laugh at me. They are Aitchers.

haitch irritates me because it doesn't make sense. We don't say lell for the letter L, or memm or sess so why would you add an initial consonant to the letter H?

Agree it's more about hyper-correction than regional accent. Can't be regional as you find people doing it up and down the country. Brummie, South-East estuary and Yorkshire dialect are all very different, I don't think they would all have one particular pronunciation in common.

Habbibu

Was going to leave this thread but you have tempted me back.

"If Irish was" - yes, what of it? Standard conditional. "Irish" is singular because it denotes the dialect of Irish English, which, as a singular count noun, is singular.

Clearly you thought I meant the Irish (as in the people) which would, of course, be plural.

But i didn't. I meant what I said.

I mean, if you want to pick me up for being lazy and saying Irish (technically, a language from the same family as Scots Gaelic) when I should have specified Irish English, go ahead - but I don't think that's what you meant at all, is it?

Haith drives me nuts. Fingernails on blackboard! I was taught to say Aitch - anything else was considered ill-educated. Then I went and married a Northern man who says (shudder) Haitch, and I assumed it was regional. I taught our dc to say Aitch, but then school went and ruined all my good work by teaching them Haitch. Two different schools, both in the SE. So I thought, maybe I'm just being a linguistic snob.

Now this thread has confirmed to me that I am right.

BTW, I love frakkin's Halphabet .

Unless you're Irish saying Haitch just sounds moronic. I think it's on a par with saying 'says' to rhyme with graze rather than 'sez' IYKWIM.

Irish and Hiberno-English are two completely separate languages, MIF -- Irish isn't 'technically' a language from the same family as Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton, they are all full-blooded Celtic languages, whereas Hiberno-English (is this what you mean by 'Irish'?) is Germanic.

I suspect Haitch may be a hangover from centuries past that survived in various pockets of England and Scotland, and in Ireland especially, but died in others, supplanted by Aitch somewhere along the line.

Irish English/Hiberno-English will indeed have Germanic roots but will have been influenced by Norman French, Central French, Classical Greek, Latin, Irish Gaelic (to a lesser extent) and probably more languages.

Does anyone know when letters were actually given names?
'H' was certainly a letter in Old English as it appears frequently in Bede's Ecclesiastical History but I'm not sure if letters had 'names' at that point or if the names would have emerged when spelling (and indeed English) was standardised.
Hhmm - not sure. Need to look up textbooks...

God help my DDs teachers if they try to insist that my girls say "Haitch". There's something about the word which makes me want to scream "Nooooo! Wrong!" at the top of my voice.

One of DD2's teachers is already in the cart with me for trying to insist that DD says "Pardon?" and not "What?". I know it's pedantic but it really gets on my thrupennies (just in case you had any mad ideas that I think we're posh I thought I should disabuse you!).

Can I apologise for my sloppy grammar above - had moany child on knee and was in a terrible rush.
Irish/Hiberno English does, of course, have Germanic roots and *has8 been iunfluenced blah blah blah

MamaVoo says to rhyme with graze is also regional

To call it "moronic" says (to rhyme with graze...)more about you than people with differing pronunciation

Haitch is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. DD1's teacher (school in SE London) says that either aitch or haitch is fine. I have told DD1 that this is completely WRONG. I think she understands now...

Many people of Caribbean heritage put a 'h' sound on the beginning of anything starting in a vowel, yet strangely they drop their aitches too, so they would say Haitch, but it's still wrong. Can't believe how many people are trying to say it's a regional thing! Not regional at all, it happens the length and breadth of the country, across all counties and dialects and it's still wrong! (Though I'll accept the Irish/Scottish excuse as sounding vaguely plausible .)

Someone (can't remember who) was saying that it perhaps should be aspirated, but why would it be, when the written word starts with an A? Then we'd all be doing the Jamaican thing! A Happle and a Hegg anyone?

It definitely stems from people assuming that as the word represents the sound 'h' it should start with an 'h' and they think they are being common by saying 'aitch' and well-spoken by saying 'haitch'. To be fair, we rarely see the actual words for the letter sounds written down, so I realise it's an easy mistake to make, but once pointed out, why still do it?!!!! There is no logic in the argument - why do we not call an 'S' a SES and an 'R' a RAR and an 'M' a MEM?
See - you're just plain wrong. No point trying to argue a case for it, it won't stand up.

There's an incredible number of judgemental snobs in this thread .

mathanxiety explained the origins beautifully, and even if it is "working class" who are the "other classes" to judge? Its far from uneducated, as many of the posts on here show.

English itself was heavily influenced by all the languages that influenced Hiberno-English, and by Norse languages too; Britain was directly colonised by the Vikings to a much greater extent geographically than Ireland was (they were confined to a few coastal outposts like Dublin in Ireland) it was influenced by the Celtic languages perhaps less than Hiberno-English. It didn't develop in a vacuum. It continually evolved over the centuries, and remains in a state of evolution that is the nature of languages.

Terms like 'right' and 'wrong' are of limited use in trying to understand the development of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc., but they are really useful if anyone was trying to make head or tail of the British preoccupation with class.

"Irish and Hiberno-English are two completely separate languages, MIF -- Irish isn't 'technically' a language from the same family as Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton, they are all full-blooded Celtic languages, whereas Hiberno-English (is this what you mean by 'Irish'?) is Germanic."

No idea what you are getting at. I think my second post shows that I acknowledge I was being lazy to describe the varieties of English spoken in Ireland as "Irish". And also that I am well aware that the language spoken in the Gaeltacht is from a completely different language group.

I am aware that this is pedant's corner, but surely being pedantic about a mistake that the offender has already acknowledged as laziness rather than misunderstanding is taking it all a bit too far?

Seem to have missed your second post, MIFLAW, or maybe we x-posted.

Sorry, just to spell it out. When I say "technically" I don't dispute the Celtic qualities of Irish. I mean that Irish, in its proper sense, describes the Celtic language and not the Germanic one. But that I hoped it was clear that I was being lazy and using it to describe the varieties of English spoken in Ireland.

Which means I have even less idea what you are getting at, except a desire to correct me after I have corrected myself.

Thanks
Agus go raibh maith agat.

"Haitch" is wrong. End of.

And it sounds horrible. Especially up here in Yorkshire. "Is that wiv a haaaaaaaaaaairtch?"