Is Haich the new Aich? (for the letter H)

[weekendalmostover]

For the second year in a row, first in Y1 and now Y2, my DS has a teacher who says "Haich" rather than "Aich". In both cases the teachers have been new to the school. I always correct him at home, but he insists that is what his teacher is saying. Has it become more acceptable these days or have we just been unlucky? Somehow it would seem rude to ask the teacher about it directly.

Is she from the North West?

It always made sense to be for the sound of a letter to begin with the actual letter. All the other letters do! (with the exception of W and Y, those are two weird letters)

Aich is correct - Haich is not (teacher).

It may change but hasn't so far.

If there is one thing that drives me mas it's Haitch. It's just wrong! I think you need to tell your DS that sometimes teachers don't get things right!

No - it's correctly 'aitch'. My daughter also comes home saying 'haitch' occasionally. I say that it may be what other people say but it's not what we say that everyone has different accents but if you want to be correct you say 'aitch'. I have it with other stuff too like 'pardon' which makes my skin crawl but some adults insist that children say.

No, it hain't.

Correctly like others have said, it is 'aitch' but in a world where literally can now mean figuratively, I hold little hope for standards to be maintained.

Aitch is correct and that has not changed. What has changed is general acceptance and visibility of regional accents (eg on the bbc) and pronunciation of Aitch as Haitch is a regional variant.

It can be a religion thing (Catholics say haitch), or just a scone/scone thing. I think getting hung up about it either way is pretentious.

Oh, IslaValargeone! Your views on linguistics are positively prescriptivist. Language changes and evolves, so move with the times.

What standards? That we should all speak RP?

Nomorecrumbs - what about all the other letters that don't 'begin with the sound they make'? - f, l, m, n, r, s, x (which mostly begin with an 'e' sound when you say the alphabet).
I find Haitch really irritating. Ds has a friend at school whose parents call him haitch for short. Ds calls him haitch too even though he says aitch for the letter.

Oh yes, I forgot about those English is strange. I fail to see what is so irritating about pronouncing a letter in a non-standard way, though, and fear you are transferring some as-yet-unvoiced fear of what this whole "haitch" business might lead to.

Shock, horror, he might be coming out with "ain't" in the wrong context next!

I say haitch because I was brought up in Irish family and that's how everyone says it.
I'm sure you can all get over this if you try really hard. Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.

Nooooooooooooooooo (dislike haitch intensely it's up there with "pacifically"!!!)

Yes, my DC have also come home from school saying haitch. It annoys me slightly but I do not correct them on the basis that it is a variant rather than an error.

However, Nomorecrumbs - I'm with Isla on the literally thing. I understand about language evolving but, but, but...!

I'm catholic and have NEVER said haitch!

It's not the evolution of language, it's incorrect pronunciation - plain and simple. Some people in some regions might pronounce it 'haitch' but that's got nothing to do with language evolving.

Dialect can spread. "Haitch" is an example of a dialect variance. This can lead to language evolution.

Big up the Northern language revolution I say!

Yeah, the change in the use of "literally" is bizarre, but look what happened to "spendthrift" and so on. Confusion abounds.

It annoys me, but not as much as people saying 'myself' every time they mean 'me' and 'yourself' every time they mean 'you'. DS3's YR teacher did this.

Much of what is dressed up as ' language evolving' is simply language misuse based on ignorance and/or laziness.
I'm not suggesting everybody speaks RP just because I mention the word standards, but if 'moving with the times' involves propagating even more ignorance and laziness, then I'll pass.
Interesting thread though, it's like, totes amaze.

The thing is, like, if the commoners back in the day hadn't been mucking about with Latin to make Old English, we would still be speaking like the Romans and have a much stranger keyboard.

That trend to introduce new words/phrases is just continuing and always will. Some will make it; some won't I hope totes amaze doesn't

Though I admit now that youngsters should, if they're at all savvy, conform to the examiner boards' version of Standard English and not try and chuck in any linguistic creativity or latest buzzword

I overheard a conversation a while back between two teenage girls, they were talking about a friend who was 'like well ill'
That isn't right on any level :o

And I really don't think non-standard ways of speaking can be down to mainly laziness.

Nearly all fluent English speakers know the "correct" ways of speaking (I'm not talking about the nuances of prononciation of a single letter or dialect here - more about phrases) but choose not to down to habit or convenience (why would you choose to say "I'm going to the town centre" when you could roll it off as "I'm goin' town" more quickly and still be understood?) or in order to feel like they belong to a particular cultural group (it makes me smile rather than clutch my pearls when I hear teenagers say "it's buzzin'!" which reminds me of my own youth...except we had different code words!)

Who cares? Are you really worrying about how your child pronounces a word they will almost never use?

Hear hear!

Are the teachers Irish? Or of Irish extraction?

I'm Irish. Everybody here says 'haitch' and you would be looked at very strangely for saying 'aitch'.

I have to make a conscious effort to say 'aitch' when spelling words for British people.

Another Irish variation is the letter 'r', which we pronounce 'oar'.

It's a dialect thing - it's no big deal surely?