How do you pronounce the eighth letter of the alphabet (h)?
I live in Queensland, AUS (Brisbane). People here, split roughly 50-50, use both aitch and haitch as the pronunciation of ‘h’. I’m not aware of the usage in other Australian states. I would like to know what the prevalence is in Australia - other countries as well.
If you’re confused, so am I. The prevailing myth, undoubtedly apocryphal, is that the early educators in Brisbane, mostly Irish nuns who hated the Cockney accents of the daughters and sons of the convict prisoners, in order to eliminate the dropped ‘h’ in the Cockney dialect ('ere, 'apenny etc), over-pronounced the ‘hee’ of the aitch to make an haitch.
Does this occur in other Australian states? In other countries?
In my experience it seems to occur randomly throughout Australia.
The New Oxford Dictionary gives aitch as the name of the letter h. It does not have an entry for haitch, so I think that the aitch pronunciation is the most common world wide. Whether that makes it wrong or not is open to debate. I guess it is as wrong as nucular
Post preview note: I’m being remarkably diplomatic here, haitch is a pet hate of mine.
I had heard that during more turbulent times in Northern Ireland when children meet a child who they don’t know they may ask the new kid to say the alphabet. By the time the new kid reaches “H”, the other children know whether or not to beat him up based on how he pronounces it.
Anyone want to confirm or deny?
My answer to the OP: without conducting any research I feel confident stating that everyone in the U.S. says “aitch” (and I even had a few Irish Nuns as teachers!).
Not sure of the veracity of this, but a (Republican) friend of mine from Northern Ireland told me that this was one way of subtly finding out ‘which foot someone kicks with’: Catholics tend to say ‘haitch’, and Protestants ‘aitch’. Certainly the majority of people I know in the Republic say ‘haitch’.
In my experience in south-east England, it’s a class thing - working class people say ‘haitch’, middle class people say ‘aitch’. However, I get the impression that in the north of England, it’s pretty universally ‘haitch’.
As for the veracity of it, I’m only repeating what I’ve heard as well. But one widely-reported (in the Northern press) incident a couple years ago involved loyalists bursting into an East Belfast college classroom and demanding the students say the alphabet so they could pick out the ‘taigs’.
When I was growing up in Dublin in the 1960s and 1970s I and all my friends said “haitch”. I heard English people using the “aitch” pronunciation, and I assumed they were just dropping the initial ‘h’ as they do with so many words.
There’s a pattern with the names of the letters that the sound (or one of the sounds) associated with the letter concerned features in the name. If “aitch” is the accepted pronunciation then it’s an exception to this rule.
This is a generalisation but my (Anglican) mother says Catholics usually say “haitch”. I have found this to be pretty much true. It’s probably just the way they are taught at school. I’ve always said “aitch” because “haitch” sounds terrible. Another one that annoys me is when people say “Sat-day” rather than “Sat-ur-day” … cringe.
I can attest to the fact that it’s “aitch” in America. I didn’t even realize that it could be pronounced differently. I guess it’s like that weird “zed” thing too.
Oh the joy of being an ignorant American. But then, whenever I’ve met an English, Irish or Australian person, the alphabet doesn’t normally come up in conversation.
“Zed” may be weird to you, but I was an adult before I discovered some people say “izzed”. Other variations, according to this Straight Dope Mailbag, include zad, zard, ezod, izzard, and uzzard.
I grew up with “zed” and “haitch”, so they’re pretty deeply ingrained as the “proper” pronunciation for me.
