Just to add a note of seriousness, I seem to recall hearing that the haitch/aitch distinction has been used a Catholic/Protestant s(h)ibboleth in Northern Ireland. Which I suppose makes the gun … apropos.
The other day I found myself working with someone I had never met before. Her accent immediately told me that she was from Northern Ireland, and when she spelt my name to check that she had noted it properly, she pronounced the first letter of my surna…
Hmm. I "discovered" Mitchell and Webb maybe two weeks ago*, which led to a bit too much time spent watching one of their shows over the last few days. Does Language Log monitor the web habits of its/their/your readers?
(*) Via this joint charity sketch with Armstrong and Miller, which BTW is also linguistically loaded:
@Bloix: To me (Standard Southern British English, University-educated), haitch is still socially-marked and not entirely acceptable. But it seems to be (becoming) one of those matters which is either not noticed by those who might previously have cared; or (maybe more likely), if such people do notice it, they are not pointing it out for fear of being wrong, or of being thought prissy if they say anything, or of not being politically correct.
For example, a 5-year-old Londoner of my acquaintance came home from school one day recently saying haitch. His mother, who has the same education and upbringing as I do, rang me up and asked me to speak to him to persuade him that he should say aitch. He refused, saying that his teacher said it that way, and so that must be right. His teacher must therefore never have been picked up on it in her training or at any other stage. This is possibly a side-effect of the recent increased acceptance of certain accents other than Standard Southern British English in English society: there are now national newsreaders from Southern Scotland, Northern Ireland, North-Eastern England and South Wales, with accents to match, so, if anyone had even noticed my young friend's teacher's haitch, they may well have thought they shouldn't say anything for fear of being thought to ridicule the way someone had been taught to speak. I'm not sure that haitch is a s(h)ibboleth of any one regional accent of the UK in particular; I may be wrong, but it seems to me more of a social thing, national in scope, than a geographical thing.
Haitch remains more usual than aitch in the Republic of Ireland. I noticed a cable TV spokesman with a quite demotic accent say aitch in "HDTV", though he may be reciting British-generated copy.
Most RTE newsreaders say aitch, but they also have /s/ rather than /ʃ/ in e.g. "issue" /ˈɪsju/ and even "negotiate" /nɪˈgosiet/ which I never hear otherwise. My theory is that there is one pseudo-snob enforcing personal hobbyhorses on the whole department. The news reporters, as opposed to the in-studio readers, often have haitch.
Based on a sample of n = 2 (girlfriend from 30 yrs ago; guy I used to work with) I conclude that the Welsh also say 'haitch.'
When I've visited the UK recently, I've been struck by how the 's' pronunciation of issue, tissue, negotiate seems to have become the norm on the Beeb. When I was growing up in England, 'sh' was pretty much standard for everyone, as far as I can recall. The 's' version seems pretentious to me — and it seems like a contrary development to the general abandonment of RP and embrace of estuary English.
Ha ha, In Bruges. Delightful, funny, and tragic movie. Rent it if you haven't seen it. To the worldly among us, is Bruges as delightful in person as the movie makes it seem?
I'm pleased that my spot has made it onto Language Log, but slightly surprised that the collective pedantry of commenters here hasn't noted what is already commented upon on YouTube, namely that HHH is an initialism not an acronym, and that a certain sort of pedant (not me) would consider 'saying things wrong' ought to be 'saying things wrongly'. Personally, although I say 'aitch', I have always thought it rather odd that that the name of the letter does not actually contain the sound of it, and the 'haitch' pronunciation, whatever its geographical distribution, is surely more logical. As for 'ignorami' I am reminded of the pedantic 'correct' plural of 'octopus' as 'octopodes'.
Language is infectious. If someone sees or hears something, it's natural to copy it (a la Zelig) and/or assume it's correct. In the past, education trumped communication to some extent because the main forms of national communication were TV and radio, whose language was/is constrained. Today communication is unfettered. Hence the wild spread of "haitch", "couldn't of", "has saw", the plural apostrophe and other low forms of English.
"wrong" is an adverb as well as an adjective. See Merriam-Webster's dictionary of English usage, or any dictionary
in response to Steve F, who said
a certain sort of pedant (not me) would consider 'saying things wrong' ought to be 'saying things wrongly'
I would have thought that "wrong" is adjectival in "saying things wrong"– object complement after a factitive verb, like "strong" in "makes her coffee strong" or "flat" in "sings the second note flat."
[(myl) You may be right — see here for some discussion of cases of adjectives as predicate complements in cases where they might also be taken as adverbs. But right and wrong are sometimes clearly adverbs:
You're doing it right/wrong.
*You're doing it correct/incorrect.
You're doing it correctly/incorrectly.
And this may be one of those cases:
You're saying it wrong.
*You're saying it incorrect.
You're saying it incorrectly.
(Stars assigned per the norms of standard written English.)[
Hardly new. Regional accents have been standard on the BBC since the end of the sixties.
More pedantry, but Wilfred Pickles from Halifax in West Yorkshire is often claimed to be the first newsreader to speak with a regional accent rather than in "BBC English". This was in the period during and after WW2.
Obviously, the English name for Y has its "long vowel" sound, as in "my", "try", etc, but not its consonant sound as in "yes". The name /jai/ would have both, but it's a phonologically marginal English sequence (I can only think of "yikes"). I would quite like to see /jai/ spelt "yy", but "yie" is more plausible.
Although "ar", the name of R, is spelt with an R, it has no /r/ sound in nonrhotic accents, unless the next word begins with a vowel sound (as is the case, fortunately, in ..QRS..). "ray" would be a better name.
The name of Q is also imperfect; it is most commonly spelt "cue" rather than "queue", and it does not have the /kw/ sequence most typical of the letter. Better if it were called /kwi/, "quee", pace urbandictionary.
In German, the name of each letter has its sound (or one of its commonest sounds). However, "Eszett", the name of ß, is not spelt with an ß (though you could call it "Straßen-S").
'Double-yew' does not contain the most generally recognised w sound ('wuh'), and 'wye' does not contain the most generally recognised y sound ('yuh'). If we nevertheless count these names as containing 'w' and 'y', we can equally count 'aitch' as containing 'h' (in the final 'ch').
In German, the name of each letter has its sound (or one of its commonest sounds). However, "Eszett", the name of ß, is not spelt with an ß (though you could call it "Straßen-S").
Actually, I rarely ever hear it called that here in Austria; it's scharfes ß (read: scharfes Ess) rather than Esszett.
You are correct about the Northern Irish Pronunciation issue although i haven't heard it being referred to recently. When I was at school it was very much something that came up on occasion.
Funny. While growing up (I attended a British-system primary school in Asia), I always thought that "haitch" was a 'British thing' and that it was only because of my strange American accent that I even knew of the existence of "aitch". I was certainly annoyed at all those kids who used to bully me about my accent when I found out that "aitch" was actually preferred among certain Brits.
Sili said,
July 17, 2010 @ 11:53 am
Just to add a note of seriousness, I seem to recall hearing that the haitch/aitch distinction has been used a Catholic/Protestant s(h)ibboleth in Northern Ireland. Which I suppose makes the gun … apropos.
Bloix said,
July 17, 2010 @ 11:56 am
I heard an English news announcer the other day say "haitch eye vee/AIDS." Is haitch becoming socially acceptable?
John Cowan said,
July 17, 2010 @ 12:17 pm
Perhaps. But it might also be someone who has changed his accent, but sees "haitch" as a matter of lexis and leaves it undisturbed.
Peter Harvey, linguist said,
July 17, 2010 @ 12:22 pm
The eighth letter of the alphabet…
The other day I found myself working with someone I had never met before. Her accent immediately told me that she was from Northern Ireland, and when she spelt my name to check that she had noted it properly, she pronounced the first letter of my surna…
Andrew said,
July 17, 2010 @ 12:34 pm
Thing is, Tony strikes me as the kind of guy who would insist HHH is an initialism rather than an acronym.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
July 17, 2010 @ 1:04 pm
Hmm. I "discovered" Mitchell and Webb maybe two weeks ago*, which led to a bit too much time spent watching one of their shows over the last few days. Does Language Log monitor the web habits of its/their/your readers?
(*) Via this joint charity sketch with Armstrong and Miller, which BTW is also linguistically loaded:
Link to Youtube
and is part of a whole series that I think has been mentioned on here…
Damien Hall said,
July 17, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
@Bloix: To me (Standard Southern British English, University-educated), haitch is still socially-marked and not entirely acceptable. But it seems to be (becoming) one of those matters which is either not noticed by those who might previously have cared; or (maybe more likely), if such people do notice it, they are not pointing it out for fear of being wrong, or of being thought prissy if they say anything, or of not being politically correct.
For example, a 5-year-old Londoner of my acquaintance came home from school one day recently saying haitch. His mother, who has the same education and upbringing as I do, rang me up and asked me to speak to him to persuade him that he should say aitch. He refused, saying that his teacher said it that way, and so that must be right. His teacher must therefore never have been picked up on it in her training or at any other stage. This is possibly a side-effect of the recent increased acceptance of certain accents other than Standard Southern British English in English society: there are now national newsreaders from Southern Scotland, Northern Ireland, North-Eastern England and South Wales, with accents to match, so, if anyone had even noticed my young friend's teacher's haitch, they may well have thought they shouldn't say anything for fear of being thought to ridicule the way someone had been taught to speak. I'm not sure that haitch is a s(h)ibboleth of any one regional accent of the UK in particular; I may be wrong, but it seems to me more of a social thing, national in scope, than a geographical thing.
Dr Swiffer said,
July 17, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
The plot of this sketch is just a linguistic version of that of the movie In Bruges.
mollymooly said,
July 17, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
Haitch remains more usual than aitch in the Republic of Ireland. I noticed a cable TV spokesman with a quite demotic accent say aitch in "HDTV", though he may be reciting British-generated copy.
Most RTE newsreaders say aitch, but they also have /s/ rather than /ʃ/ in e.g. "issue" /ˈɪsju/ and even "negotiate" /nɪˈgosiet/ which I never hear otherwise. My theory is that there is one pseudo-snob enforcing personal hobbyhorses on the whole department. The news reporters, as opposed to the in-studio readers, often have haitch.
Stephen Jones said,
July 17, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
Hardly new. Regional accents have been standard on the BBC since the end of the sixties.
David L said,
July 17, 2010 @ 5:01 pm
Based on a sample of n = 2 (girlfriend from 30 yrs ago; guy I used to work with) I conclude that the Welsh also say 'haitch.'
When I've visited the UK recently, I've been struck by how the 's' pronunciation of issue, tissue, negotiate seems to have become the norm on the Beeb. When I was growing up in England, 'sh' was pretty much standard for everyone, as far as I can recall. The 's' version seems pretentious to me — and it seems like a contrary development to the general abandonment of RP and embrace of estuary English.
Mr. Fnortner said,
July 17, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Ha ha, In Bruges. Delightful, funny, and tragic movie. Rent it if you haven't seen it. To the worldly among us, is Bruges as delightful in person as the movie makes it seem?
Matt McIrvin said,
July 17, 2010 @ 7:26 pm
Guns with silencers don't sound like that! **BANG**
Lumi said,
July 17, 2010 @ 7:34 pm
@Mr. Fnortner:
It very much is.
Steve F said,
July 17, 2010 @ 10:13 pm
I'm pleased that my spot has made it onto Language Log, but slightly surprised that the collective pedantry of commenters here hasn't noted what is already commented upon on YouTube, namely that HHH is an initialism not an acronym, and that a certain sort of pedant (not me) would consider 'saying things wrong' ought to be 'saying things wrongly'. Personally, although I say 'aitch', I have always thought it rather odd that that the name of the letter does not actually contain the sound of it, and the 'haitch' pronunciation, whatever its geographical distribution, is surely more logical. As for 'ignorami' I am reminded of the pedantic 'correct' plural of 'octopus' as 'octopodes'.
Steve F said,
July 17, 2010 @ 10:53 pm
Oops, apologies to Andrew, who noted that 'HHH' isn't an acronym before I mentioned it.
mollymooly said,
July 18, 2010 @ 4:14 am
"a certain sort of pedant (not me) would consider 'saying things wrong' ought to be 'saying things wrongly'"
"wrong" is an adverb as well as an adjective. See Merriam-Webster's dictionary of English usage, or any dictionary.
Adrian Bailey said,
July 18, 2010 @ 6:58 am
Language is infectious. If someone sees or hears something, it's natural to copy it (a la Zelig) and/or assume it's correct. In the past, education trumped communication to some extent because the main forms of national communication were TV and radio, whose language was/is constrained. Today communication is unfettered. Hence the wild spread of "haitch", "couldn't of", "has saw", the plural apostrophe and other low forms of English.
Tom Saylor said,
July 18, 2010 @ 7:11 am
To mollymooly, who said
"wrong" is an adverb as well as an adjective. See Merriam-Webster's dictionary of English usage, or any dictionary
in response to Steve F, who said
a certain sort of pedant (not me) would consider 'saying things wrong' ought to be 'saying things wrongly'
I would have thought that "wrong" is adjectival in "saying things wrong"– object complement after a factitive verb, like "strong" in "makes her coffee strong" or "flat" in "sings the second note flat."
[(myl) You may be right — see here for some discussion of cases of adjectives as predicate complements in cases where they might also be taken as adverbs. But right and wrong are sometimes clearly adverbs:
You're doing it right/wrong.
*You're doing it correct/incorrect.
You're doing it correctly/incorrectly.
And this may be one of those cases:
You're saying it wrong.
*You're saying it incorrect.
You're saying it incorrectly.
(Stars assigned per the norms of standard written English.)[
Alan Wallington said,
July 18, 2010 @ 7:34 am
Hardly new. Regional accents have been standard on the BBC since the end of the sixties.
More pedantry, but Wilfred Pickles from Halifax in West Yorkshire is often claimed to be the first newsreader to speak with a regional accent rather than in "BBC English". This was in the period during and after WW2.
Stephen Jones said,
July 18, 2010 @ 7:48 am
Other letters that don't are W and Y.
Rick S said,
July 18, 2010 @ 9:04 am
Er… The names for W and Y are double-yew and wye, which clearly DO have the sound of the letter in them.
And you could say that the name for H contains the (zero) sound of the h in honor. ;-)
I'll go back to eating my ghoti and chips now.
mollymooly said,
July 18, 2010 @ 10:59 am
Obviously, the English name for Y has its "long vowel" sound, as in "my", "try", etc, but not its consonant sound as in "yes". The name /jai/ would have both, but it's a phonologically marginal English sequence (I can only think of "yikes"). I would quite like to see /jai/ spelt "yy", but "yie" is more plausible.
Although "ar", the name of R, is spelt with an R, it has no /r/ sound in nonrhotic accents, unless the next word begins with a vowel sound (as is the case, fortunately, in ..QRS..). "ray" would be a better name.
The name of Q is also imperfect; it is most commonly spelt "cue" rather than "queue", and it does not have the /kw/ sequence most typical of the letter. Better if it were called /kwi/, "quee", pace urbandictionary.
In German, the name of each letter has its sound (or one of its commonest sounds). However, "Eszett", the name of ß, is not spelt with an ß (though you could call it "Straßen-S").
Andrew (not the same one) said,
July 18, 2010 @ 1:39 pm
'Double-yew' does not contain the most generally recognised w sound ('wuh'), and 'wye' does not contain the most generally recognised y sound ('yuh'). If we nevertheless count these names as containing 'w' and 'y', we can equally count 'aitch' as containing 'h' (in the final 'ch').
Adam said,
July 18, 2010 @ 5:12 pm
Well, at least he takes criticism as well as he gives it out.
Weekend links « Eric Gregory said,
July 19, 2010 @ 12:06 am
[…] Mitchell and Webb on word rage, via Language Log: […]
Nightstallion said,
July 19, 2010 @ 6:36 am
In German, the name of each letter has its sound (or one of its commonest sounds). However, "Eszett", the name of ß, is not spelt with an ß (though you could call it "Straßen-S").
Actually, I rarely ever hear it called that here in Austria; it's scharfes ß (read: scharfes Ess) rather than Esszett.
C said,
July 25, 2010 @ 6:59 pm
You are correct about the Northern Irish Pronunciation issue although i haven't heard it being referred to recently. When I was at school it was very much something that came up on occasion.
J.H. said,
August 3, 2010 @ 3:21 pm
Funny. While growing up (I attended a British-system primary school in Asia), I always thought that "haitch" was a 'British thing' and that it was only because of my strange American accent that I even knew of the existence of "aitch". I was certainly annoyed at all those kids who used to bully me about my accent when I found out that "aitch" was actually preferred among certain Brits.