Well, I heard one once. He was speaking Oxbridge, so maybe it was an affectation for him too, but I definitely heard it.
The /h/ sound is thought to have disappeared from Latin around the 1st century AD. So to be historically accurate you should leave it in while reading your Cicero, but drop it when reading the Vulgate. The /h/ sound was lost in Vulgar Latin early enough that it did not survive in any Romance language. It was probably lost in Greek even earlier, I think during the 1st century BC.
When the Franks took over France, they spoke a Germanic language that had the /h/. They introduced a number of Frankish loanwords into the French language, and thanks to the linguistic habits of French speakers, the Frankish /h/ was soon lost in pronunciation. However, it left behind a ghost of itself in the concept of “aspirated h,” which is misleading, because in modern French it isn’t aspirated, even though they still call it that. The only difference it makes is that the normal elision is canceled before these Frankish loanwords. Les heures is pronounced /le zør/ but les haricots (an “aspirated h” word) is pronounced /le ariko/. A hiatus or glottal stop intervenes between the two vowels instead of a z.
Interesting, Jomo, but that doesn’t seem to tally with Juvenal’s poetry where pronouncing the leading Hs helps with scanning. Perhaps he’s still a little early at the turn of the century?
As an aside, I’m very disappointed to find that I can no longer translate straight off.
Poetry often conserves older features of the language after everyday speech has dropped them. I guess in Juvenal’s case he was consciously keeping the /h/ sound in his poetry, even if people around him weren’t pronouncing it any more. The way people talk, everyday speech usually comes out more or less unconsciously. But a poet thinks through what he wants to say carefully. Especially in ancient Rome where maintaining the traditions of the past was a high priority.
Or perhaps some Romans dropped the h and some didn’t? I realize Catullus is quite a bit earlier than Juvenal, but IIRC, he wrote a poem making fun of a social climber who was trying to put on a fake accent and ended up putting a bunch of extra h’s in the wrong places. If pronouncing the h was a status marker of sorts, it would make sense that educated Romans would cling to the older pronunciations long after everybody else had abandoned them.
Hey, relax, it’s all meant in a loving, caring way-
I bet you get a hoot out the way the Queen speaks, right?- it’s funny (and if you’ve ever heard the critic Brian Sewell - well he makes her Madge sound like a docker) well the filet thing is just as funny outside the US, it just is. I don’t find the erb word particularly funny, it’s just I’ve never understood it - I thought there was some simple well-known reason but now people are bringing the Lats and their poetry into it I’m just impressed by the depth of knowledge being brought to light
Mmmmmmn… Anchovys… Pizza Napoli… Drool…
Really? Then explain Americans pronouncing clique as click and niche as nitch? And as for Notre Dame, Des Plaines, Des Moines…
me:
clique: ‘cleeque’
niche: ‘neeshe’
notre dame: ‘noe-truh dahme’
des plaines: ‘day plains’
des moines: ‘day mwa’ with slight ‘n’ sound for ending… hard to type my way of saying it… and i know at least 2 of those aren’t right…
Good on clique and niche. Prefer Not-ruh (rolling the r in Gallic fashion). I don’t even know “Des Plaines” for sure myself, but I’m sure it’s not “Dez”, which I’ve heard many times. I’d go with Day Plahn, with the final n being fairly quiet. And I’d agree with you on Des Moines, but I’ve heard Moynz many times.
And thank you for the interesting information on vaginal deterioration after 40. Can you treat it with 'erbs?