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Post by Weyland on Aug 19, 2011 8:32:48 GMT
The aspirated pronunciation is almost certainly polysemous. My pneumocologue said almost the same thing this morning. That's easy for you to say.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 11:49:56 GMT
But how do you decide which to say on any particular occasion? Usually I don't. It just falls out of my mouth. Haitch is the norm in Hiberno-English. I speak Hiberno-English but not fluently. I said aitch when I lived in England and gradually taught myself /naturally assimiliated the Haitch in Ireland. Actually, it hurt me to say Haitch for the first few years and I fought against it at first because it felt so wrong; a bit like, as Ev says, saying hain't, innit. Eventually you just fall in to line. Now I think I say Haitch but sometimes people (mainly rude children that I am related to) pick me up on an aitch. I never took up the lesser but equally pungent habit of saying Ore (with a pronounced R sound) for R (which surely is pronounced as 'are' by all decent folk?). The Haitch, I suppose, is originally an Irish (Catholic) v English (Protestant) divide, which also translates as an historic class issue. But did the English once say Haitch and then lost the H? Has it survived only in pockets or did we add it because we like embellishing stories? (Did you notice that I said ' an historic'? What do you think about that?)
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Post by jean on Aug 19, 2011 12:40:18 GMT
Haitch is the norm in Hiberno-English. I speak Hiberno-English but not fluently. The Haitch, I suppose, is originally an Irish (Catholic) v English (Protestant) divide, which also translates as an historic class issue. Now we're getting somewhere. It used to get discussed a lot on the Beeb Word of Mouth board... someone...always pointed out that Irish Protestants said 'aitch' while Catholics said 'haitch'. No idea if that's true. It seems that it is. My mother, an Irish Protestant (though not really Anglo-), always insisted on 'aitch' as the only correct, or 'educated', pronunciation. She was so vehement about this that I've completely forgotten anything I was taughtabout it at school. She never mentioned the Catholics in this context though, so I've never been quite sure whether what I'd read about the religious divide was true. But 'haitch' is very common in Liverpool, and there's a lot of Irish influence on the accent. That's the interesting question. As the pronunciation presumably predated the spelling, it's important which spelling came first. I'll look it up later. There's certainly a large group of people for whom haitch is the normal pronunciation and they never give it a thought. There's nothing pretentious about their pronunciation. But according to skylark and Weyland, there are parts of the country where no-one normally says haitch, and there you might argue that its adoption has a totally different, Hyacinth Bucket-ish semiological significance. Ah - but did you say an historic... or an 'istoric? French is to blame for that.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 12:57:28 GMT
'an Historic' but sometimes I say a (as in cat) historic and sometimes I say ay historic... I usually try not to talk about anything historic.
I never say istoric.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 13:12:03 GMT
I like your mother. She's the Kingston lady, isn't she. She was a bit snobby though, right? No offence meant, I have that genetic make up myself. You mentioned something somewhere about getting over prejudices about these sort of things -- the way I did it was to live in 21st Century Ireland. Come live in Ireland.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 13:31:11 GMT
Here's some wikipedia stuff which shows this thread to be a pretty good reflection of the whole H controversy:
In almost all dialects of English, the name for the letter is pronounced /ˈeɪtʃ/ and spelled ‹aitch›[1] or occasionally ‹eitch›.
The pronunciation /ˈheɪtʃ/ and hence a spelling of ‹haitch› is often considered to be h-adding and hence nonstandard.
It is, however, a feature of Hiberno-English[2] and other varieties of English, such as those of Malaysia, India and Singapore.
In Northern Ireland it is a shibboleth as Protestant schools teach aitch and Catholics haitch.[3]
In Australia, this has also been attributed to Catholic school teaching and is estimated to be in use by 60% of the population.[4]
The perceived name of the letter affects the choice of indefinite article before initialisms beginning with H: for example "an HTML page" or "a HTML page".
The pronunciation /ˈheɪtʃ/ may be a hypercorrection formed by analogy with the names of the other letters of the alphabet, most of which include the sound they represent.[5]
The non-standard haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982[6] and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers.
Despite this increasing number, careful speakers of English continue to pronounce aitch in the standard way, although the non-standard pronunciation is also attested as a legitimate variant.[7]
The pronunciation haitch followed the introduction of Phonics and was designed to help prevent working class children from dropping the initial H in words such as hospital (otherwise pronounced as 'ospital).[citation needed]
Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name.
The Oxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was [ˈaha]; this became [ˈaka] in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French [ˈatʃ], and by Middle English was pronounced [ˈaːtʃ].
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language derives it from French hache from Latin haca or hic.
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Post by jean on Aug 19, 2011 13:40:11 GMT
I like your mother. She's the Kingston lady, isn't she. Kingsto wn. But yes. She was one of these.I've often wondered about that. In a religious sense, she certainly was, but in a social sense, it's not so clear. They lived a kind of Molly Keane existence in big (not that big) crumbling houses, but if she'd really set so much store by it, she'd never have married my father. She found him while on holiday in Wales. He was from a very humble background, but he was a Protestant, and that was the only thing that mattered. My aunt, now: she really was a snob. I don't think I'm going to do that, even though it might be the only way I'll ever get to meet the Toad. But I should visit more often than I do.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 13:49:06 GMT
I like your mother. She's the Kingston lady, isn't she. Kingsto wn. But yes. I guess I should stop reading all your posts in that Jafaican accent now?
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Post by jean on Aug 19, 2011 14:08:15 GMT
You'd better discuss that with David Starkey.
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Post by trubble on Aug 19, 2011 14:16:02 GMT
I'll be back to all this later. And to Starkey. Poor fella. There's something in all this Starkey and H business that is important if I could just get it out.
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Post by riotgrrl on Aug 19, 2011 20:58:11 GMT
I say 'a historic' but I say it with attitude, letting people know that it's apparently grammatically wrong according to DA MAN but that it suits how I talk and that I don't care.
I say it in a rebellious yet enchanting way.
That's just how I roll.
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Post by aubrey on Aug 20, 2011 8:38:24 GMT
A Historic.
Aitch as well.
And then perhaps this misery of class-prejudice will fade away, and we of the sinking middle class … may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.
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Post by jean on Aug 20, 2011 8:56:55 GMT
That's lovely, aubrey! Who said it?
(Welcome back, btw. Good holiday?)
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Post by aubrey on Aug 20, 2011 17:07:51 GMT
It is the last sentence of The Road to Wigan Pier.
Good holiday, yes. Hanging about smoking and drinking whisky with my brother for a lot of it, at the bottom of our mother's garden (we do talk as well).
And we had a party for the family to celebrate him and Leanne's visit (Leanne is his NZ wife) at which I got staggering drunk, for the first time since 2005. Still, I did not fall over while getting back up the garden, and then took my trousers off and got into bed (too drunk to contemplate anything more, like washing, etc), slept for 7 hours and woke without even a slight headache. I'm pretty sure I did not insult anyone either (I am not that kind of drunk).
There was also a trip to Leeds, and another one to Gainsborough, where we went to see the site of our old house (now a mound of earth behind a girls' school).
Actually, this is what I put on the Fall site about that one:
Me and my brother went to Gainsborough on Thursday to see some friends. Half way through the gathering we went for a look around the old place, and to our old house as well, which used to be behind a girls' school, overlooking the playing fields.
It isn't there any more; where it stood there is now a big mound of overgrown earth. What was our garden is a tennis court: but not even that really, as the school has merged with the school next door and all its buildings near our house are boarded up and the tennis courts don't seem to be used. We went for a walk around the back, and found the grass banks where we used to try and faint - crouch and breath deeply for a while, then stand up and hold your breath - with the bank you could fall over backwards and not hurt yourself, though it still seemed a long way to fall when I looked this time and I didn't dare try it.
The whole of the playing field at the back seemed ragged; all the groundsmen's sheds are gone, and the main drive up to the house is so overgrown we couldn't walk down it: it is all a lot more unrecognisable than when I went there with my mother about 5 years ago, though still better than when we went maybe 10 years ago, when the house was still standing but was all over grafitti, with a big hole in our bedroom floor.
We walked about for a bit; it was evening and a bit melancholy. My brother got me to take a picture of him in commemoration of the time, maybe 40 years ago, when he was having a piss and nearly got caught by someone coming along around the end of our garden.
I used to spend hours trying to sneak up on the rabbits at the bottom of the field (I didn't want to catch them, just get near); there were no rabbits this time, though it might have been a bit early for them.
There is still a railway line at the bottom of the field, behind a line of evergreens. It goes from Gainsborough to Cleethorpes/Grimsby. I have often dreamed about it since, and seeing it now was a bit like another dream.
Our old school (under the railway line and through a wood) has been demolished as well: though through the hedge we could still see rugby posts on the playing field. I don't think we ever had them when I was there.
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Post by everso on Aug 20, 2011 17:22:02 GMT
Thinking about the aitch/haitch thing again, how does everyone who says haitch pronounce "BHS" (British Home Stores)? Surely not Bee Haitch Ess? That doesn't roll off the tongue!
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Post by Weyland on Aug 20, 2011 20:47:44 GMT
Thinking about the aitch/haitch thing again, how does everyone who says haitch pronounce "BHS" (British Home Stores)? Surely not Bee Haitch Ess? That doesn't roll off the tongue! Takes me back. The (trolley)bus stop on Northumberland Street near BHS in Newcastle, next door to C&A, used to be announced by some conductors as "Cheap 'n' Aahful!" Happy daze. Does BHS still exist? C&A – a Dutch company – still does, though not in Britain.
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