Answer (1 of 7): There are more accents to the English language in the British Isles than there are in the rest of the English speaking world. (Source Sir Richard Attenborough’s English Language BBC documentary) So whose version of English are you talking about? is it: * Cockney * Geordie * ...

October 28, 2020 - You're delving more into accents and the origin of accents here but I guess it is a part of language learning. Many British accents are known for dropping the H in words when the H is stressed - meaning that the sound of the H sounds ...

October 28, 2010 - The sound of says, ate, mischievous, harass, garage, schedule and aitch is shifting. Once upon a time, there were gales of laughter when Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em pronounced harass with the emphasis on the second syllable. Now, according to the British Library, evidence suggests that for people under the age of 35, it is becoming the favoured pronunciation.

Answer (1 of 50): Ach! Poor education mostly. Or the excuse that ‘other letters begin with the sound they make’/’to remind us what sound it makes’. ‘H-aitch’ begins with an aitch. The letter ‘Aitch’ does not. There are other reasons behind pronouncing this phantom ‘H’, like Blaming the Frenc...

February 26, 2023 - The correct way to say ‘H’ is to say it as AITCH. The problem with some speakers (myself included) is that we can ‘over-emphasise’ the letter H so it comes out sounding HAITCH. I think this can stem back from our childhood when we were scolded for ‘dropping our h’s’ . Fearing being reprimanded for not clearly sounding our H’s at the beginning of words, we then accentuate the H sound so it starts to sound like HAITCH.

Don't be tricked into saying it just because you're hearing it more often. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H ... I found this poll while looking for something to educate my colleagues who continually mispronounce H as Haitch. It's actually disappointing to see so many people are not only pronouncing it wrongly but are also ignorant enough to try to persuade others that they are correct.

Answer (1 of 22): Sometimes too much. It’s an indicator of class and education. Uneducated English are often inverted snobs; educated people are simply correct. Sounds terribly snobbish, but it is what it is. Well-brought-up English speakers call the letter by its name “aitch”. Dragged-up unedu...

June 14, 2018 - But it does – the tiny H on “(h)aitch” divides the nation. The pronunciation has become something of a social password, a spoken shibboleth distinguishing in-groupers from out-groupers.

March 13, 2018 - The two variants used to mark the religious divide in Northern Ireland – aitch was Protestant, haitch was Catholic, and getting it wrong could be a dangerous business. Perhaps the letter H was doomed from the start: given that the sound we associate with H is so slight (a little outbreath), there has been debate since at least AD 500 whether it was a true letter or not.

November 10, 2025 - Spelling pronunciation has also added /h/ to the British English pronunciation of herb, /hɜːb/, while American English retains the older pronunciation /ərb/. Etymology may also serve as a motivation for H-addition, as in the words horrible, habit and harmony: these were borrowed into Middle ...

Answer (1 of 30): Why “should” it be “Aech”? English inherited that pronunciation from French, in which initial “h” is always silent. But with only a handful of exceptions (also inherited from French, or in the case of “humidor”, ...

October 30, 2014 - Viewers and campaigners say the mistakes mark the beginning of a 'slippery slope' and called on the national broadcaster to only hire presenters who use correct English.

The rule goes that the article ... would say “a hotel”. But some posher speakers tend to treat a pronounced H as if it were not there, so they would say “an historic” and “an hotel”. H droppers tend to always use ...

August 22, 2025 - No – in many words (like “hour” or “honest”), the H is silent in this accent. Learning these exceptions is key to sounding natural. Why does my H sound too harsh? This happens if the back of your tongue rises too high.

December 4, 2024 - The oddly named letter H is usually ... is a distinctive feature of Hiberno-English, one that may have originated as an a hypercorrection but is now the norm in most Irish ......

July 6, 2025 - It wasn’t until the 1800s that many British speakers began pronouncing an /h/ at the beginning of the word to match its spelling, making this another interesting example where American English is actually more linguistically conservative than ...