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Pedants' corner

Aitch, NOT Haitch please!!!

(81 Posts)
Trisha57 Mon 02-Mar-20 19:54:15

It always enrages me when people pronouce the letter "H" as Haitch. Petty, I know, but it really gets my goat!

Grammaretto Tue 03-Mar-20 16:38:48

Nessles BlueBelle I remember now, thanks. Before they were that bad company selling dried milk powder to starving mothers in Africa.
Nescafé and presumably nessles milk. Was that the condensed milk?

grandtanteJE65 Tue 03-Mar-20 16:23:29

Things like this irk us because we care about our language and we grew up in a time when learning to speak and write correctly was considered a good thing.

BlueBelle Tue 03-Mar-20 16:03:22

It’s a generational thing and I hold my hand up and say I ve caught it too and now it sounds perfectly normal to my ears
Not really that much of a problem we get used to it like
Nest lays (nesuls) and Porcha (always Porsche in my day and al-monds which were always armonds or even Bo da see a, who suddenly became Boo dick a
Constant change we just need to get used to them

Grammaretto Tue 03-Mar-20 15:48:12

Around here the pronunciation is Hitch.
My kids was tort that at school.
Ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, jee
Hitch, eye, jeye, kay . Elomenopee,
Cue, ar, es, tee, you, vee, dubbleyou, ex, why, zed.

The ay for orse rendition is a bit different too. It's C forth (seaforth) highlanders.
Just local variations.

Marydoll Tue 03-Mar-20 15:35:00

The spelling of the letter H is spelled aitch, so where does the h come from, when some people pronounce it haitch.

Also, many dictionaries state that aitch is standard English, whereas haitch is considered non standard, but acceptable.
Acceptable, unless you are a pedant like me. ?

hicaz46 Tue 03-Mar-20 15:34:11

I think it’s an age thing. I notice it’s ‘younger ‘ announcers/people who say ‘ haitch’ They are also the same people who say yourself instead of you and myself instead of me. Listen out it will annoy you all as much ‘haitch’

JulietFoxtrot Tue 03-Mar-20 15:19:23

OP, why do you assume ‘aitch’ is the correct pronunciation. Or do you just prefer it if people speak like you do?

Wheniwasyourage Tue 03-Mar-20 14:55:57

Me too. I've caught a DGC saying 'haitch", and had words!

Thank you Marydoll, for the information on jye. I grew up with it in the west of Scotland, but it is pretty rare in the NE where I live now. Perhaps it doesn't translate into Doric!

Laineynanna Tue 03-Mar-20 14:43:12

Trisha57 Totally with you on this !!!

TrendyNannie6 Tue 03-Mar-20 14:41:37

Totally agree it gets my goat too trisha57 lol

Jane10 Tue 03-Mar-20 14:37:09

Nanny27 I suggest that you check the OED. A previous poster did and found it isn't wrong to pronounce H in that way.

mrswoo Tue 03-Mar-20 14:06:00

marydoll and paddyanne as an incomer to Argyll I worked in a gift shop which sold wooden alphabet letters. A customer asked me for the letter jye and I remember looking up and down the racks of letters feeling totally bemused before informing her that we didn’t have that letter. Oh, I had a lot to learn!
20 years on and living in NE England I recently informed someone that my postcode was 2*jye. ( and naturally I also said that I “stay” at such and such address as opposed to “live at”. But that’s a whole other story!)

Nanny27 Tue 03-Mar-20 14:03:47

there's no right or wrong well actually jane10 there is. The Oxford English Dictionary is the reference for all spelling and pronunciation in the English Language. If everyone just spelled and pronounced as they liked we'd end up with a system that no-one could understand.

Oopsminty Tue 03-Mar-20 13:58:42

Drives me mad.

It's Aitch

And when saying NHS I have noticed that haitchers struggle somewhat

Much easier to Aitch

annodomini Tue 03-Mar-20 13:56:31

In my Ayrshire school, the only person who said 'jye' was my P3 teacher with whom I had a mutually hostile relationship! I'd never heard 'haitch' until I came to live south of the Border.

Grandma70s Tue 03-Mar-20 13:46:57

Some dictionaries record what people actually say rather than what they ought to say. Also, though possibly irrelevant in this case, you have to be careful to check that online dictionaries are British and not American. Americans call their language English, but it’s different in many ways.

Recently there were a lot of news items about HS2. I noticed that BBC newsreaders etc had obviously been instructed in correct pronunciation. Not one said haitch!

Marydoll Tue 03-Mar-20 13:41:57

paddyanne, Oxford English Dictionary (1st edition) states:

The name of the letter, now jay, was formerly jy, rhyming with I, and corresponding to French ji; this is still common in Scotland and elsewhere.

So there you have it! ?

Jane10 Tue 03-Mar-20 13:37:47

As an Edinburger I always thought 'itch' for aitch was a Fife thing! Jye for jai is common round here though. My SiL was very confused by it all.
Who cares though? Who are the pronunciation police and who says they're right? People's pronunciation of words and sounds gives a lot of information about them. There's no right or wrong just people judging each other by their own standards which may or may not be particularly valid.

Jillybird Tue 03-Mar-20 13:30:24

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Daddima Tue 03-Mar-20 13:29:43

Edinburghers pronounce it ‘itch’

paddyanne Tue 03-Mar-20 13:15:06

I Scotland its the jai jye thing,Folk who have moved from other part of the UK dont know why we pronounce "j " as JYE .According to some its from the old french pronunciation Marydoll may know the answer ,it involves a Z .Lots of old scots words are attributed to our auld alliance past so it may well be true

Maggiemaybe Tue 03-Mar-20 13:11:21

There's an aitch in my postcode. Whenever I've to give it, I say aitch, they say A?, I say aitch again, they say Oh, you mean haitch! I've long ago given up. grin

kircubbin2000 Tue 03-Mar-20 12:44:19

It's really annoying . In N. Ireland only the Catholics say Haitch.Dont know the reason.

Marydoll Tue 03-Mar-20 12:28:40

That was meant for inishowen

Marydoll Tue 03-Mar-20 12:27:45

A bit of a sweeping statement. confused