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!

lovelycoffee- there are an incredible number of judgemental snobs in this thread.
Tsk - c'mon, you're in pedants' corner!

Err... aren't you being a tad judgemental too?

Like me, of course

Campion

I think lovelycoffee's right.

There is a large number

There are many

Hoist by your own petard, no?

Um I have an upper middle class excessively educated background and I say haitch. Of course it is possible that might have started long ago to irritate, but it certainly feels quite instinctive now. My very working class (although highly educated) dh says aitch. I wouldn't associate it with education or class at all. But then my grandparents said "orf" and an hotel and I just thought they were a bit strange. I do have a pet peeve now I'm in North America with them saying "erbs" though.

The 'an hotel' or 'a hotel' thing is interesting. In EFL we teach students aspirate the 'h' because apparently that's now standard English (although I did have a long and involved discussion with my lovely tutor about which is technically correct including the derivations of a lot of h words) but as most people now aspirate most hs it's taught as standard. I totally agree that almost all h words were preceded by 'an' in days gone by and the KJV of the Bible is a lovely example of this but language has changed, as it so often does, and most words, such as hotel, are 99% aspirated. The jury's out on historical/historian though. Personally I would say (and teach) an historical and an historian because that's what I say but other's aspirate and teach them aspirated. The notable exceptions to the new-fangled fashion for aspiration are heir, honest, honour and hour. Of course EFL is slightly different because you so often have to teach what you say when you're virtually the sole language input and I would undermine my own credentials by teach a historian and promptly saying it an historian!

My other pet peeve on the a/an debate is when I see this like a 11 year old, a IV drip, a OAP, a APB.

curls up and dies in a corner

Or (worse) the other way round. I saw 'an UFO' written the other day.

But that's OT!

Now I am curious, why are they different? I too would feel that your first examples were all wrong, but why not an UFO? If I saw "an UFO" I would think "an unidentified flying object", which surely is correct?

Also surely it is a historian, not an 'istorian? That sounds very strange to me because I expect a "hiss" there (and I know a few). But then I watched a documentary about (or possibly by) John Betjemen when he was talking about an 'otel and it just sounded very quaint indeed to me.

Historian depends on the way you were brought up I suppose. That's why the jury's still out as in standard English it's still entirely acceptable to say both. If you speak quickly an historian doesn't sound strange at all. I suppose it depends whether you say ah or ay for a, both of which are correct in standard english. My natural instinct is to say ah and ah hiss-torian sounds awkward to me, ah-niss-torian sounds more natural, maybe because of the emphasis on the second syllable of his-TOR-rian? For me saying a historian would involve stopping the ah at the back of my throat and then some abdominal work to produce the h for historian. If you say ay then you don't have that problem.

It's to do with the way your throat and mouth form the sounds. If you 'say the sounds' for UFO then ay-you-eff-oh (or ah-you-eff-oh) is correct because it flows better. An-yew-eff-oh isn't. A vowel 'sound' is precended by 'an' and a pronounced y as is the case with you, which is how most people pronunce u, isn't a vowel 'sound'. When written out in full it's an-un-id-ent-if-eyed (I know you wouldn't split the word like that but bear with me, I'm making a point) so you are correct for "an unidentified" giving a consonant sound before the 'uh' but we don't say uh-eff-oh, we make it yew so there's no need for the consonant sound in an. Does that make sense?

It works in reverse too - like an MP, which becomes an em-pee where people would assume it was written a MP because M is a consonant.

I've reworked that post so many time so it makes sense. I hope it does now. I know what I'm trying to say but it's really difficult to write down and would be so much easier to demonstrate when speaking!

"mathanxiety Tue 19-Jan-10 23:13:09
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. "

Er...I think I already kind of said this.....

"It's to do with the way your throat and mouth form the sounds. If you 'say the sounds' for UFO then ay-you-eff-oh (or ah-you-eff-oh) is correct because it flows better. An-yew-eff-oh isn't. A vowel 'sound' is precended by 'an' and a pronounced y as is the case with you, which is how most people pronunce u, isn't a vowel 'sound'. When written out in full it's an-un-id-ent-if-eyed (I know you wouldn't split the word like that but bear with me, I'm making a point) so you are correct for "an unidentified" giving a consonant sound before the 'uh' but we don't say uh-eff-oh, we make it yew so there's no need for the consonant sound in an. Does that make sense?"

It does indeed make sense - orthographically 'the 'U' is a vowel but phonetically, the word does not begin with a viwel sound.

or even a vowel sound

MIFLAW, well, I was confused then, because of the association of the verb directly with the language - I did think you meant the Irish, as we'd been talking about speakers of the language, and otherwise, yes, I would have assumed you meant Gaelic, not Irish/hiberno English. Apologies.

well explained, frakkin.

to add to that, which i think can help with the "a" "an" rules:

originally, in middle english (i'm not sure if the time period is correct: let's stick with "once upon a time"!), most words that now start with an "a" used to start with an "n". like apple used to be napple. so you would say "a napple" so when it mutated into apple, it still needed the nuh sound. so it became "an apple". there are other words that follow this rule of etymology, but i don't know them all.

i was taught this by my German teacher, who took linguistics and English language history as her degree.

Yeah, I remember learning about 'a nadder' turning into 'an adder' at some point in history although had forgotten all the details.

To take the discussion in a slightly different direction: who aspirates their "wh" sounds?

Where I am from, "which" and "witch" are not pronounced the same.

I do! But not for 'who'. Definitely for 'which', 'where', 'why' though.

sasamaxx I did originally write something similar and then thought I'd be jumped on for jargon! underestimates the acuity of MNers first thing in the morning

hoo!

she meant she didn't WHoo

pgrin]

i'm common so the wh are pronounced without aspiration, but i do know a man from the Midlands who always aspirates his whs.

Bugger. Clicked on this from the side menu. Really thought it was gonna be like Celebrity Knockout with an impostor versus the one and only Real Aitch.

No - I wasn't thinking about the "wh" in "who" - which as nickelbabe correctly states, is pronounced "hoo"

Cheers.

PMSL at Avril

I now have images of you sitting at your computer with a puzzled expression on your face going "w-hoo?".

no, that would be "wooo-hooo!" more an expression of joy than a question.

Interesting. I do say "ay" frank, so that makes perfect sense. The "n" thing too. English is so interesting

MIFLAW - on reflection I think either is acceptable but ( in that context) is is maybe a little more pedantic.

And no-one would ever accuse me of that

But you've probably moved on...

Frakkinaround - ah - that was more sensible - prob the jargon is unnecessary ...or should that be 'specialised lexis' ? LOL

I was doing the 'who hoo woo' sounds at the computer too

I pronounce all my 'wh'sounds as 'w' but I'm ultra common being from Scotland