H

[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.

[2CheekyMonkeys]

Bahaha! I take your point lime slice!!

I still pronounce it 'h' aitch though! ;-)

[LimeSlice]

Is it different state to state? I've always put the 'h' sound in front and that's how they teach it at my kids school. There is a phonics program and they do the h with a 'h' sound. To be honest it annoys me when it's said with the 'aitch' sound. I'm in qld by the way.

I spent several years in State schools in Queensland, and we were still taught 'aitch'.

[Tinks]

I was never taught it at school. My Nanna taught me.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

At school, I teach that H is pronounced "hydrogen".

[Trillian]

I think the confusion comes from it being taught as a 'h' sound as in 'huh' - the Jolly phonics program teaches it as a 'huh' sound JOLLY PHONICS h song from Read Australia - Having FUN with phonics - YouTube and the natural extension of that would be to assume that it's said as 'haitch'. I think our dialects are changing that much because people are just getting lazy with their speech so the pronunciation isn't there anymore.

[AnyDream]

I would like to point out the reason why H is called aitch is a historical one arising from French, which was spoken in britain for several hundred years after the whole William the conqueror thing.

In French, most h's are silent (ie, soft sounding letter without an audible Huh sound). There are exceptions (le haricot, le hamburger), but on the whole most of those h's are soft, and the letter itself is called "ache" (pron. "ush"). Allegedly, nearly a third of words in English have French origins, so a lot of the words we now pronounce with an aspirated "huh" probably started with silent h's. But nobody has gotten around to adjusting the name of the letter.

That's why you still come across people who insist on saying an hotel and an history.

[Teeki]

I would like to point out the reason why H is called aitch is a historical one arising from French, which was spoken in britain for several hundred years after the whole William the conqueror thing.

In French, most h's are silent (ie, soft sounding letter without an audible Huh sound). There are exceptions (le haricot, le hamburger), but on the whole most of those h's are soft, and the letter itself is called "ache" (pron. "ush"). Allegedly, nearly a third of words in English have French origins, so a lot of the words we now pronounce with an aspirated "huh" probably started with silent h's. But nobody has gotten around to adjusting the name of the letter.

That's why you still come across people who insist on saying an hotel and an history.

I say it as aitch, but I would be confused if someone said an hotel or an history, as if the h was never there at all. To me it's always a 'soft' sound or letter, you breathe the h part and the 'harder' sound comes from the next letter. So in hotel, you breathe the hhh sound and the next sound comes from the o. I can't think of any word where the h letter is actually pronounced like huh, it's always just kind of breathed.

If people were not going to say anything at all for h we may as well take it out of the alphabet.

[2CheekyMonkeys]

I say it a a breath type sound too. High rather than a 'huh' sound. But I still say 'haitch'.

[~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!

[trishalishous]

I say it both ways *hides*

[squeezles]

I say haytch