The Letter H

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with The Letter H. The eighth letter of the English alphabet has the distinction of being the first letter to have its own listing in the dictionary, doing so many years before the second. Look up 'H' and discover the recommended pronunciation is 'aitch' although the dictionary concedes the increased use of 'haitch' is an alternative. Hear, too, how the letter came to English, of its changing usage throughout history and just how the letter's upper case rugby posts-like image and corresponding lower case form came about. Yet this is not just a talk about a single letter but a look at the development, changing usage and beginnings of our all-too familiar alphabet.

The letter ‘H’, the eighth letter of the alphabet, is also listed in the OED under the first letter of the alphabet – ie ‘A’. This is because the letter ‘H’ is unique as it is the only letter in the OED to be listed as a word. Why on earth would this be I hear you cry – well no, I don’t but you’re finding out anyway. It is because of the plural, a plural found in the phrase (sadly not used anywhere near enough these days) “to drop one’s aitches”.

Now dropping one’s aitches is the reason why some refer not to AITCH but to HAITCH. Remember Parker the chauffeur in Thunderbirds? He was your archetypal cockney, his speech saw him drop the aitch at the beginning of words such as ‘appy, ‘elp, ‘erring, and ‘enry, but include an erroneous ‘h’ at the beginning of words such as h’easter, h’avenue, h’artist, and h’England. Now somewhere along the way someone thought the letter ‘aitch’ began with an ‘aitch’ when it doesn’t but it does end in an ‘aitch’

Now the OED base their rules very much on usage. Thus the more people get it wrong and say HAITCH the more likely it will be that HAITCH will lose its listing under ‘A’. Indeed the OED already recognise both forms, so the rot has probably already set in so far it is impossible to reverse

Not only do we add an ‘h’ at the beginning when none is present, but we also pronounce the ‘h’ at the beginning of words where the ‘h’ is present but accepted pronunciation is without. Perhaps the best known of these is ‘hotel’ which, being of French derivation, should be said to be ‘otel and thus we should say ‘an hotel’ not ‘a hotel’. There are others: such as ‘hour’, ‘heir’ and ‘honest’ which have also come to English from French.

We also need to look at the origin of the letter for, like all letters and symbols, they were not simply invented but developed. To do so it is probably easier to work back from the present era rather than forward from the beginning of writing. During the last thousand years the letter has become harsher in languages such as Portuguese and Spanish; while Romance languages, such as Romanian, had lost the sound completely until re-borrowed from neighbouring Slavic languages. All these come from Etruscan ‘H’ and this comes, in turn, from archaic Greek alphabets the letter became a long vowel, borrowed directly from the earliest known form as a letter. While the Greek version is eta early forms give this as heta, itself also seen in the Phoenician heth. The Phoenician alphabet had two forms, one clearly very similar to a modern capital ‘H’ and the other related to Old Semitic which appears as the ‘H’ but with a bar at both top and bottom. This in turn clearly represents a part of the Egyptian hieroglyph known as ‘fence’. Both of these are referred to as a ‘voiceless pharyngeal fricative’ and undoubtedly stood for a fence or posts.

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.