H: aitch or haitch?

[Mangetout]

@Richard_Pearse

Is it? Would you also say wubblewoo, sess, memm, nenn, feff, etc?

I’m going to do this from now on.

[Aspidistra]

@Richard_Pearse

Is it? Would you also say wubblewoo, sess, memm, nenn, feff, etc?

well, no, but hey, I don’t say haitch either. I’m illogical all round!

[gotpasswords]

Another variant
:
Most of our programmers from India pronounce it as “etch.”

[galen_ubal]

I pronounce it ‘aitch’ - I’m from the States. Most Australians seem to pronounce it ‘haitch’, insofar as I’ve noticed.
Two countries, separated by a common language…

[panache45]

I have never heard anyone say “haitch.”

[Staggerlee]

@jjimm

In my experience in the Republic of Ireland, nearly everyone says haitch. In southern England, there is something of a class distinction, with middle-class people saying aitch and working class people saying haitch; however further north it appears just to be regional.

I’ve heard it suggested that those who ‘drop their aitches’ (i.e don’t pronounce them) are also those who say ‘haitch’, almost as if compensating. Not sure to what degree this holds true.

[jjimm]

@Staggerlee

I’ve heard it suggested that those who ‘drop their aitches’ (i.e don’t pronounce them) are also those who say ‘haitch’, almost as if compensating. Not sure to what degree this holds true.

I think that would apply to London/Estuary accents, and maybe northern English too, but not Irish ones.

[Superhal]

ESL teacher here, been one for 13 years, taught in two countries, and had students from 10 others. Never heard “haitch” in my life.

I have heard “zed” from quite a few students, mainly European or Asian.

I have studied “naught” and “aught” but usually hear “oh.”

[Lord_Mondegreen]

@jjimm

A friend of mine from Northern Ireland told me that was one of the guidelines (among others, including observing which newspaper/s people read in the tearoom) that he and his friends used when in the civil service in the 1980s to establish if someone were Catholic or Protestant (it being a socially forbidden question). Generally, he said, it was Catholics: haitch; Protestants: aitch.

Yep. In Australia the nuns in Catholic schools taught “haitch” while the rest taught the correct “aitch.” “Haitch” bugs the hell out of me. It’s still overwhelmingly Catholics who say it.

[Wallenstein]

My wife (welsh) and I (english) both say “aitch” in normal speech. However, we’re teaching our toddler the alphabet and “haitch” seems to be easier to pronouce, so we tend to spell things out that way.

[Acsenray]

@gotpasswords

Another variant
:
Most of our programmers from India pronounce it as “etch.”

Another pronunciation common in India is “hetch.” One of my relatives confused a lot of people over here when she spelled her name with a “hetch.”

[BigT]

@Giles

(1) I say “aitch”

(2) The “haitch” pronunciation is originally Irish, and transported itself to Australia, so that a lot of Australians say it that way.

(3) By pure coincidence, my user title [エッチ (H)] contains the Japanese way of saying H, which in romanised form would be “ecchi”. So they don’t start it with the h sound – if they did, they’d say “hecchi”.

Seeing as I don’t have the fonts installed, I had no idea what that said. Are you an ecchi lover?

Anyways, I say aitch, although I tend to think of it as haitch with a silent h.

Also as part of my new goal to habituate people to using IPA: Those two options are /eɪt͡ʃ/ and /heɪt͡ʃ/, respectively.