H

[JLeigh29]

I'm a primary school teacher and always said haitch...until a few years into my teaching career. I was mortified when I found out as I am a grammar and spelling Nazi and Literacy is my favourite subject! It most definitely is aitch, but I find the vast majority of kids I taught had been taught haitch. Phonics programs are written and read, rather than heard, so lots of teachers are now teaching it incorrectly. Most of us (including your children's teachers) went through school using a 'whole language' approach to Literacy, where nothing was explicitly taught.

Moreover, H doesn't say 'hah', it says 'hhhh' like you're trying to fog up a mirror. It's an unvoiced sound, if that makes sense. I could go on...

[surprised]

I have a vague feeling that a long time ago Protestants tended to say aitch and Catholics said haitch. I think it had something to do with what was taught by most teachers in the Catholic school system.

Has anyone else heard of this? Or did I dream it lol?

[~clover~]

I have a vague feeling that a long time ago Protestants tended to say aitch and Catholics said haitch. I think it had something to do with what was taught by most teachers in the Catholic school system.

Has anyone else heard of this? Or did I dream it lol?

I learnt in year 4 I think that it was aitch. A teacher mentioned it to another kid in the class. That was in a Catholic school. They never 'taught' us how to say it though from memory... I think people assume it's got the 'h' sound at the front, because they feel it needs to be there, but ever since I learnt the correct way to say it, it stuck. I actually argued with DD1 about this the other day, because teachers also say 'haitch'. Drives me nutty too!

It's less confusing than 'C' when I'm doing homework etc with the kids!

[2CheekyMonkeys]

Moreover, H doesn't say 'hah', it says 'hhhh' like you're trying to fog up a mirror. It's an unvoiced sound, if that makes sense. I could go on...

So to me the unvoiced 'hhhh' sound means you say 'haitch' doesn't it? How do you say 'hhhh' and have it end up as 'aitch'?

[LimeSlice]

So to me the unvoiced 'hhhh' sound means you say 'haitch' doesn't it? How do you say 'hhhh' and have it end up as 'aitch'?

By that logic, we would all be saying Lell for L.

We aren't talking about the various sounds the letters make, we are talking about the names of the letters.

The letter H is pronounced aitch. The letter L is pronounced elle. The letter M is pronounced em. And so on.

[squeezles]

I say haytch