Haitch?

[bainbrig]

Heard on BBC London TV this morning:

“W HAITCH Smith” (for W H Smith).

There is no such word as HAITCH,

Or have they changed the language?

[douglas9401]

From Private Eye, Dave.

[bainbrig]

Purely in the same spirit, goalie... 1970's - why the apostrophe?

BB

[-Talbot-]

I'm just glad I'm one of AB's thicker posters ... None of this bovvers me.

[goodgoalie]

Touché, BB - I was typing too fast!

[bhg481]

I was born in the 40s. When I was growing up in a small town most shops were privately owned and had the name of the owner as the shop name, corner shop "H Manley", butcher "T Slater" etc, so it was common parlance to go to Slater's or Manley's. Sainsbury's used to have "J Sainsbury" on their early shops, so "Sainsbury's" caught on as the shop name.

[kvalidir]

'Haitch' is an Irish thing, all Irish I've ever heard pronounce it 'haitch', certainly my father does. My mother being English does not. I vary depending on whom I wish to upset over nothing. It's not a sign of poor education more of dialect, and language evolves anyway so it offends me not at all that Oscar Wilde and Yeats said 'haitch' and you do not, I'll stick with Oscar :-)

[mccfluff]

mass confusion in the office, we're saying aitch... not haitch

[woofgang]

the one that gets me is where as single "s" is pronounced "sh" in the middle of a word...like "conshume" and "ashume" instead of "consume" and "assume"

[goodgoalie]

.....and at the beginning: shtreet, shtress, shtrong

[woofgang]

yup!

[mccfluff]

who does that??? (outraged squeaky voice)

[murraymints]

Sean Connery

[mccfluff]

oh well, he has a pass

[diddlydo]

Haitch irritates me but I accept it's largely a regional thing. What really really bugs me is "I should of......" instead of "I should have....."

[jim360]

I hate sounding h as "haitch" too, but there you are. English has benefitted historically from being relaxed about "proper" pronunciations and/or spellings.

[Garaman]

Following on from Jim's point, a lot of people will readily accept changes in pronunciation etc. which happened before they were born, but seem to think the language should be frozen at the point they learnt it.

[murraymints]

You guys... GGGRRR

[woofgang]

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse ***. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
― James D. Nicoll

[bainbrig]

kvalidir: I know that 'haitch' ISN'T a sign of poor education. What I wrote, and stand by, is that it is TAKEN as a marker of the ill-educated.

Language evolves, of course, but the tendency many of us abhor is that of adding unnecessary words or phrases ('up', 'so', 'like', and so on. Language evolution tends to the more simple, not the more complex.

Which is all by-the-by, of course. 'Haitch' grates on many ears; I would advise people not to use it.

[Jahulaye]

The English language and all other languages are constantly evolving so let’s not beat ourselves up or “ grammar nazi” others.

There’s a lot to be desired regarding the language we use. Really we should be using a phonetic language which would make more sense and help those hard of learning, children, non English speakers and those with learning difficulties grasp our language a lot easier. “Haitch” is quite apt seeing that “haitch” begins with the letter “h” imo