How come the pronunciation of herbs in the US is ’erbs? I can understand West Indians saying ‘erb to refer to Weed ‘cos the dropped H is common there, but not in America (personally I wish you’d drop the W, but that’s a whole different matter). I asked an American friend who’s lived in Blighty for a long time and she didn’t have a clue - but said that if she said “Herb” when back in the US by mistake she was looked on with great distain and pity. The only thing I can think of is that it’s seen as of French origin – in which case at this time of peace and understanding between the peoples of the world, maybe “Freedom Leaves” should be used instead.
“You say potato and I say potaaato” (- who the hell says “potaaato” anyway?)
In the words of Weebl, “Because . . . and . . . that’s why.”
Seriously, though, I have no clue. There may not be a good reason for it at all. Maybe some cunning linguist decided that after we’d made the switch from colour to color and from centre to center, it might be fun to change some pronunciations too.
Many words of French derivation are pronounced by Americans in a manner vaguely close to that of the French, whereas the Brits will mutilate the hell out of them just out of spite (witness “garage” (GAR-ridge) as one particularly egregious example). It’s just one of those things.
Tips Hat
Thanks,
Um, Thinking about it, probably the general tone of “because it just is” is about right - looking at other language threads and reading Bill Brysons excellent book on English suggests that looking for logic in language (particularly english) is a mugs game - but, hey I’m a mug and it’s just something that puzzled me for some reason
Well, yeah, but if you’ll note in the Bartleby comment, the (h)erb pronunciation is dependent on dialect in Britain, so we can probably push back the source of the American difference to the locations (and dialects) of the various Brits who initially settled in North America and which pronunciations they established. It is still a “just because” issue, but we can move it back to the right of the Atlantic.
It’s “Made in Amercia” I’m thinking of, prob just as inaccurate, but then Bryson did work (IIRC) as a journalist for a Murdoch paper in the UK . (He’s now promoting a book that seems to be trying to explain the whole of science - maybe his facts are relative?)
What I liked about his book tho was that it questioned the commonly held views about what is “English English” and what is “American English” - and if he made it all up, well why not? There’s too much accuracy around anyway - (just don’t ask me to cite on that one)
I would just like to mention that sometimes it is the British who kept the French pronunciation. In Britain, the word “trait” is pronounced like “tray”, definitely closer to the French. There are doubtless other examples, but that is the first one I thought of. It is hard to generalise about things like this.
Where did the affectation of saying “an historical …” with the “h” pronounced, come from? It sounds irremediably stupid and pedantic and to be stupid and pedantic at the same time is quite a feat.
I’d imagine it’s to do with the dialect, despite what Bill Bryson says, I heard a reconstructed Shakespearian accent and it sounds like an English West Country accent with a slight Brummie inflection.
I challenge you to find me a Brit who pronounces “trait” “tray”… I was born there and lived there for fourteen years and I never once heard it spoken thus.
I’m going to disagree with Barleby. I studied Latin and Greek to A Level, albeit 20 years ago. There are plenty of words in Latin which begin with H and we were taught that they pronounced as such - they had to be to make certain passages work. I’d suggest that it’s Greek that they mean here: Classical Greek words beginning with vowels (typically eta and epsilon) often have devices called soft or rough breathings on them. Further, Greek has phi and theta. Then there is the digamma character, present in older writings but absent in Classical Attic and Ionic Greek.
I don’t have my schoolbooks any more so I can’t quote.
And I’ll agree with Dutchboy about ‘Trait’ not being pronounced ‘Trey’ in the UK. We have many wierd and wonderful pronunciations, but that isn’t one of them.
My experience was the opposite. I’ve never (that I can recall) heard someone in the U.S. say Herb, unless it was a person’s name. In Jamaica, however, everyone pronounced the H.
We say herb down under, not 'erb. And when the silly American woman who has an orgasm while washing her hair and pronounces it “Erbal Essences” starting appearing on ads over here, there was much pointing and laughing.
And I was taught that the correct pronunciation of ‘trait’ is ‘tray’ but I rarely hear others use this. I would say it’s 95% ‘trayt’ and 5% ‘tray’, but that could easily just be the area I live in or the people I talk to. I have no idea what the real percentages of usage would be country-wide.
Pronunciation does change over the years . One example I can think of is Nestlé . When I was young everybody I knew pronounced it " nes-ells" because they only saw the word in written form on chocolate wrappers . Now most people pronounce it the correct way " nest-lay" because they have heard it spoken on TV adverts.
Man, this topic bugs me. Eddie Izzard made a joke of the whle “herbs”“erbs” thing in his show… I find it appaling that a bunch of people noted for saying “'ello! ‘ow’s it goin’?” make fun of us for how we say “erbs”. Not to mention filet and anchovy…
. (He’s now promoting a book that seems to be trying to explain the whole of science - maybe his facts are relative?)