The Misused H of England

THERE are few subjects more curiously interesting, alike to the student of science and to those who do not care specially for scientific inquiry, than the peculiarities of a language as spoken by different sections of the same people. There can be little doubt that by rightly understanding these localisms we are enabled to advance a step towards the interpretation of those wider diversities which distinguish the speech of races not forming the same nation, but having a common origin. Any one who in England, for example, studies the peculiarities of dialect in the southern, western, eastern, and northern counties, — peculiarities still so great that the inhabitants of certain localities find it difficult to comprehend standard English (so to describe English as spoken by the most cultured classes), — will be well on his way to understand how the various languages of Europe had their origin from a common stock. In particular we learn to recognize how, though we may not so easily understand why, in some communities changes of a certain kind in consonantal and vowel sounds systematically prevail. Thus in certain northern English counties the i is systematically pronounced oi, in others ee; so that as far as this vowel sound is concerned we can always translate the county language into common English by changing the oi’s or the ee’s, as the case may be, into i’s. In Wiltshire and Somersetshire, the s’s are all turned into z’s ; elsewhere, the o’s are changed into oa’s, the broad a’s into Æ’s, and so forth. In the Celtic parts of Great Britain, as in the Highlands and in Wales, we find wider examples of Grimm’s law in the altering of b’s into p’s, d’s into t’s, v’s into f’s, and so forth. But in the majority of cases it has not been found possible to explain why some sections of a race should modify certain sounds in particular ways, any more than it has been found possible to explain why the Teutonic and Latin races should have modified the language which was once common to both in such diverse directions as to produce languages whose kinship becomes manifest only under close and careful study.

The misuse of the letter h in England and the correct use of the aspirate in English-speaking communities outside the old home may be regarded as affording an instructive example of the modifications a language thus undergoes, under varying circumstances. Of course, it has not yet come to pass, and we may hope it never will, that the omission of h where it ought to be sounded and its introduction where it has no right to be have become so universal in England as to be regarded as justified by custom, —

On the contrary, in England, the misuse of the letter h is much more unpleasant than in America or Australia, where, I notice, people are more amused than disgusted by unaspirated or “ exaspirated ” h’s ; very much as we find a foreigner’s mistakes in speaking English rather pleasant than otherwise, while the mistakes of an ignorant native sound coarse and vulgar by comparison. I have heard Americans say that they find something quaint in what they are good enough to call “ the Hinglish haccent.” In England we scarcely view the matter that way. Occasionally some peculiar collocation of dropped and forced h’s may raise a laugh among us, as when dear old Leech makes the veterinary doctor tell the owner of a horse that “ it hain’t the ’unting as ’urts ’im ; it’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer, along the ’ard ’igh road.” ¹ But as a rule the h malady is regarded as a most unpleasant one in old England, however funny it may seem to Americans and Australians. It is instructive and interesting, however ; and I propose here to consider its nature and origin, the laws of its propagation, and the reason why in certain Englishspeaking communities it has never shown itself, and probably never will. Mr. Grant White has dealt with the h malady in England, recently, in a highly interesting paper, wherein, however, he presents views which are, I think, entirely incorrect. The evidence he adduces in support of his views seems to me, indeed, to point in precisely the opposite direction from that which he indicates.

In the first place, it is perfectly true, as he asserts, that the purity of American speech in this particular respect is remarkable, because America is the younger nation, and in some respects less cultivated (Mr. Grant White says “less cultivated” without any reservation), and produces the smaller part of the literature common to the two, though I cannot go on with him to say that her part of the literature is much inferior in quality as well as in quantity. He omits, however, to notice, or at least does not dwell upon, the fact that a similar but much more remarkable contrast has long existed between England nnd Ireland with regard to the letter h. A laboring-man in Ireland, who cannot write or even read English, and who talks with a brogue as broad as his spade, will never drop or misplace an h, and ridicules the h-less Saxon as heartily as would a New York newspaper critic. Whatever theory we are to adopt respecting English misuse of the h must account for the circumstance that this delicate aspiration, so slight that if it becomes more than barely perceptible it is as offensive as its omission would be, is given by the most ignorant Irishman, while it is a dead letter (or else becomes a disagreeably live letter) with Englishmen of fair average education. In certain positions, indeed, presently to be touched on, the h is almost universally dropped in England, insomuch as almost to justify its omission by persons of culture, in obedience to the authority of recognized custom.

A large majority of Englishmen drop the h in nearly all words in which it ought to be sounded. So far I go with Mr. White. But I do not agree with him that most Englishmen put in an h where it ought not to be. I should imagine, from my own observations, — and I have had exceptional means of testing the matter in my lecture travels, — that about one third of the people in England throw into their talk, now and then, a wrongly placed aspirate, but not more. My observations do not include the criminal classes, but they would not raise the proportion very much, certainly not to one half. Even those who do throw in “exaspirated ” h’s, however, are not quite so bad as most Americans imagine and as Mr. Grant White assumes. It would indeed be a difficult problem to deal with, if the worse-speaking Englishmen always precisely inverted the use of the aspirate ; omitting it where it should be, and systematically introducing it where it has no business. It would require as much skill and as good a knowledge of spelling to practice such consistent blundering as to speak correctly. Those who have studied English talk in this respect know that the very worst misusers of the aspirate give the h correctly at times, — always, indeed, with some words; and also that they are as likely to offend by “ exaspirating ” an h which is perfectly in place when duly aspirated as by inserting an h where no h should be. I remember an American whom I met in Boston, in 1873, — rather an ignorant man I need hardly say, — who remarked to me when he heard that I had recently met Mr. Emerson, “ I guess you said, ‘’Ave hi the ‘honor hof haddressing Mr. Hemerson ?’ ” He was not altogether jesting, as I at first thought, for he supposed that all Englishmen came over to America affected with the h disease, but that some quickly caught the purer “American accent,”as he called it. Now every Englishman knows that an “ exaspiration ” of h’s, when ’honored by an introduction, is more apt than usual to display the strength of his aspirations ; but even in such an accession of the malady as is thus brought on, he would not speak as my Boston friend imagined. No one could, in fact, without breaking up his talk into gasps. He would say, “ ’Ave I the Hhonor of addressing Mr. Hemerson ?" — a sentence which has no gasps in it, because the extra h’s come in along with the exaggerated emphasis which the much-oppressed person wishes to introduce. It is indeed noteworthy that these maltreaters of the aspirate always use a word into which they can fling a strong aspiration, when expressing great respect. “ ’Ave I the pleasure,” etc., would not suit them at all. Note also (what Mr. Grant White overlooks, by the way) that a big rough h, which sounds very unpleasant even in a word beginning with h, under ordinary conditions, does not sound ill at all when the chief emphasis of a sentence falls on such a word. A man may say Hhome so as to offend as much as though he said ’ome, or even more ; but one would find it very difficult to pronounce the h with disagreeable strength in such a sentence as this : “I am heartily at your service.” Note again the difference in the aspiration of the h’s in the following sentence, if earnestly emphasized : “ I am right glad to see you here ; you must look on my house as your home.” A strong aspiration on here and house would be offensive, but the aspirate in home could not well be too strong.

While the number of those who use unauthorized h’s is great, and of those who drop their h’s much greater, it must be admitted that the number of those who in some way or other maltreat the aspirate is so large that one may doubt whether one in a hundred in England can be excepted. Mr. Grant White says that he has heard highly educated men, scholars and men of scientific attainments, men who write capital letters after their names (though that counts for absolutely nothing), drop their h’s in England, “ just as in America men of like position have a nasal twang, say Mu’ica for America, and the like.” I have myself heard “ men of like position ” in America, including a professor who earnestly advocates the continued study of classical literature in American colleges, say “ you was,” “ I don’t know as,” “I remember of,” “unbeknown,” and make other like mistakes. Yet I doubt not that offenses against the laws of aspiration in England are as common as “ you was ” and “ we was ” in America. The omission of the h in such words as he, him, her, etc., may be occasionally noticed in the rapid speaking of even the best bred men in England ; but here America has no advantage, for in these words I have repeatedly noticed the h slurred or lost in quick speaking in America. The h in words beginning with wh is so often dropped in England that it is doubtful whether custom does not justify its omission altogether. Yet I am inclined to think that many Americans rather overaspirate the h in wh. The Irish unquestionably do so. Wh with them is altered into hw, a fault of speech which more than one English novelist has noted and ridiculed. I see that Mr. Grant White regards hw as the proper way of presenting the aspirated w. This seems to me erroneous. I have, indeed, very little doubt that in old times hw was the uniform and therefore correct way of giving the consonantal sound in what, which, whale, etc. In Saxon times, certainly, the sound was hw, and the spelling accordingly. Very likely the Irish retain the old-fashioned sound in this case, as in several others in which modern English pronunciation has departed from it. But at present English folk must not say hwat, hwale, and so forth, if they wish their breeding (for in England these points are matters of breeding rather than of education) to remain unquestioned. There is a legitimate way of aspirating the h in wh, which to a good ear perfectly differentiates whale from wail or wale, which from witch, and so forth. We may say hwat, what, or wat (which we must spell wot, though), and only one of these is right. Among the best bred Englishmen the delicate aspiration corresponding to the middle sound is consistently given. To one accustomed to the rough hwat, what properly pronounced sounds like wot; but to a good ear, not spoiled by constantly hearing the rougher sound, the distinction is nearly as great as that between house and ’ouse,—albeit I must admit that many Englishmen who never drop an h when it is alone neglect the aspirate when it comes in company with w.

Still more often is h neglected in words beginning with rh. But this fault is quite as common in America as in England. I have oftener heard of Road Island than of Rhode Island.

Lastly come the cases where there is divided authority as to whether an h should be sounded or not. Mr. Grant White dwells on the omission of the aspirate in the word hospital, remarking with surprise that he has often seen the words an hospital in books published within the last ten years. He says this in answer to Mr. Ellis’s remark that the omission of the h in this word is an archaism. But there are many who consider that to sound the h in this word is as improper as to sound it in honor or hour. I myself constantly sound the h now in hospital and humor (at least when in America), but it appears to me incorrect. So in the word humble, which, since Dickens made Uriah Heep so constantly call himself “a humble ” person, has gained an aspirate to which it is not legitimately entitled. We must all sound the h in humble now, I suppose; but before David Copperfield was written a clergyman who should have substituted “a humble and contrite heart,” in the “ Dearly beloved brethren,” for the legitimate “an bumble” would have been regarded as a very ignorant and vulgar parson indeed.

And now to consider the origin and progress of the h disease in all its varied forms : —

There seems no room for doubting that the h disease had its origin in London. Walker speaks of it as specially prevalent in London in his day, and even now it is more common in the pure cockney dialect (the most hateful form of the English language in existence) than anywhere in England. Moreover, its prevalence in other places than London is greater or less according as such places are nearer to or farther from the metropolis. We find no trace of it in Cornwall or Wales; very little in Cumberland, Northumberland, and Yorkshire. In the midland counties it is less common than in the southern. It is at its maximum in the heart of London. In this respect it is like the v-and-w malady, which, even when at its height (it has now nearly died out), was never so badly felt in the provinces as in the metropolis; though of course, like all metropolitan defects, it spread in greater or less degree over the whole country.²

This being the case, we are justified in assuming that the disease had at first that form which is characteristic of the faults of language found at great centres of population, and especially in the chief city of the nation. If you wish to hear French clipped and slurred you should go to Paris, and German suffers like treatment in Vienna and Berlin. It is the same with English in London. In a great and busy city, men shorten their words and sentences as much as possible, being assured that what they say will be understood, because all speak the same language and adopt the same convenient abbreviations. Thus, just as in Paris cette femme becomes c’te f’me, and Voila ce que c’est becomes V’la c’ q’ c’est, so in London City Bank becomes C’ty B’ak; halfpenny is abridged first to ha’penny,, and then to hapny or ’apny. Omnibus is shortened into ’bus; every one in it addresses the conductor as ’ductor; the conductor shortens the cry of all right into ry, announces the threepenny fare as thripns, and so forth. In fact, it may be laid down as a general proposition that, although a language becomes modified in provincial places and in colonies, it is only in busy cities, and chiefly in capital cities, that a language is modified by clipping and slurring. Take any forms of county patois in England, for

example, and you find the modifications of English tending towards increased stress on the various tones; in other words, the reverse of the clipping and slurring which is always going on, though under varying forms, in the metropolis. Consider the northern dialect, for example, as truthfully presented in Tennyson’s Northern Farmer: —

Here there are shortenings of the more familiar words ’asta for hast thou, and so on ; but the tones are all lengthened, and the throwing in of a’s separately, or as additions to vowel sounds, shows well how the comparatively slow-going life of provincial places leads to prolixity in pronunciation as well as in speech. In great cities all this is reversed. Men have not time for drawling or vain repetitions. We might be tolerably certain, apart from other evidence, that such a peculiarity as the dropping of the letter h had its origin in cities, and not in country places. It saves time and it saves breath to omit the aspirate, and one might safely have guessed that in London the h would be dropped in the long run, merely because of the convenience of the omission as a ready form of wordclipping. Of course we may believe (for a raison de plus) that, as I suggested several years since in my essay on English and American English, the London fogs had something to do with the omission of the h. It is something, when a real “ London particular ” prevails (a fog which no one who has ever experienced its delights can forget),³ to avoid an aspirate ; and though the denser fogs

last usually but two or three days altogether throughout the year, it is seldom so clear and pleasant in the heart of London that one would be apt to luxuriate in many aspirations. Still, it appears to me more probable that the h was dropped in clipping the language, after customary city fashion, than that its loss was (at least primarily) due to London fog and mist.

But if we assign the suppression of the h to slurring and laziness, how are we to account for the introduction of a forced h where no h ought to be ? At first sight it seems as though any explanation of this fault must of necessity be inconsistent with the interpretation I have assigned to the omission of the h. For every one who has ever heard the forced h in its native home — I mean specially in London—knows that it is emitted after a fashion entirely opposed to the idea of laziness.

Yet in reality there is nothing more inconsistent between the “ exaspirated ” h and the suppressed h than there is between the volubility of a London cabman when anxious to convey his meaning very forcibly and his customary brevity. The same man who says, “ Jump in, gu’nor,” to his fare at the beginning of a ride shall vituperate him in well-chosen but objectionable objurgations for ten minutes at a stretch, when the journey is over, and the right fare offered him. We need not wonder if, in like manner, the same people who drop their h’s under ordinary conditions throw in more h’s than are necessary when they wish to emphasize their conversation. It is indeed noteworthy, and in it we find, I think, the key to the problem we are dealing with, that the true sound of the aspirate is never given by cockneys, and by those who have adopted their speech in this respect, to the extra h thrown in on words beginning with a vowel or a silent h. No cultured person ever pronounces the aspirate on unemphasized words as the cockney pronounces it in words which have not properly any initial aspirate. It becomes clear, then, that the false aspirate of the cockney is in reality thrown in only for emphasis. Of course there must be cases, also, where an Englishman who slurs his h’s endeavors to set matters right by throwing in extra h’s at random. In such a case he is not as often right as wrong, for the simple reason that it is usually after a mistake in the suppression of an h that he throws in an extra strong h, and the chances are in favor of its falling where no h is wanted ; but in any case, one would not notice an h that fell rightly, whereas one would at once remark an erroneous h. Hence arises the quite mistaken notion that the Englishman who both suppresses and “ exaspirates ” his h’s invariably goes wrong. Any one who carefully follows the talk of such a man will notice that he quite often gets an h in the right place, and correctly pronounces a word which has no h.

That h should fall out of words beginning with wh is obviously explained by the theory here advanced ; and the circumstance that even the most inveterate maltreater of the h never throws one in where it should not be in words beginning with w (never, for instance, says which for witch, however steadily he may say witch for which) corresponds well with my theory. For there is no gain in emphasis by aspirating a word beginning with w, as there is by aspirating a word beginning with a vowel or a silent h.

Mr. Grant White, who takes a different view, oddly overlooks the circumstance that the view which lie does take, so far from being, as he supposes, “ an explanation of the phenomenon,” would, if accepted, add enormously to the difficulty of the problem. It will be observed that if my theory is correct we can at once understand why the h is not maltreated in Ireland, America, and Australia, which is the really remarkable point. If the h disease is a defect due to slurring, and of comparatively recent origin, we can readily understand why it has not made its appearance outside the old home of the English-speaking people. There, and there alone, would the people slur (at least in the busy centres of population) the language common to all, and which all spoke with equal readiness. Elsewhere the language would be more carefully dealt with.

In Ireland, for example, to begin with that case, the English language was not so common that it could be readily slurred. Irish folk had to speak it and hear it spoken with distinctness in order to understand it readily. There the modes of pronunciation, and such matters in particular as aspiration, had to be attended to more carefully than in England, and especially in London. A very slight difference in this respect would make a great alteration in the result, for all changes in a language originate in very slight differences. But, it may be urged, the contrary is demonstrably the case in Ireland ; for there the English language has undergone great changes : they say raison and saison for reason and season, hwat and hwy for what and why, goold for gold, obleege for oblige, and so forth ; to say nothing of certain changes in consonantal and vowel sounds, which may be attributed to peculiarities in the vocal organs. This, however, affords strong evidence in favor of my theory, that a language is less modified at a distance

than in the heart of its native home. For there can be no manner of doubt that all those peculiarities of pronunciation which are regarded as especially Irish are in reality old English. The letters ea in old English stood originally for the sound which they still represent in the word great. (Pepys spells skates indifferently skeats and skates.) The French raison and saison were altered into reeson⁴ and seeson only through cockney laziness, reducing all broad vowel sounds to narrow ones. So tea stood for the same sound as the French thé, but has been narrowed into tee. As for hwat and hwy, I remember distinctly how my grand-aunt, a lady of eighty - four, belonging to the old school, used, in 1848 and 1849, to complain that I, as a schoolboy, was not better taught than to say w’at and w’y ; she herself pronounced the words with all the aspirational emphasis employed by the Irish of to-day. She systematically said goold for gold, obleege for oblige. (So did Lord John Russell, still later.) The Irish, then, retained the old English sounds here, and doubtless, also, in the initial h.

As the colonization of America was a later affair than the occupation of Ireland, we do not find so many archaisms in America as in Ireland. The h disease in England must of course be set later still, or that would doubtless have spread in America, too. As matters actually happened, the Americans started free of all trace of this malady, and have been able, notwithstanding importations of great numbers of h-dropping Englishmen in later times, to keep the malady from spreading in the new country. Probably not a single Englishman or Englishwoman who has landed here with the h disease has been cured of it; for it seems incurable in the adult. But probably in not a single case have the children caught their parents’ malady.⁵

Mr. Grant White considers that he has found evidence showing that the h was suppressed in England by all classes seventy-live years ago. “ This h breathing,” he says, “ is a fashion in speech which, I venture to say, is, among the ‘ best people ’ in modern England, hardly more than seventy-five years old.” Now, apart from the circumstance that the contrary is known, — I myself can vouch strongly for this, because I have heard the conversation of hundreds of persons who were past middle life at the time Mr. Grant White mentions, and know that they were as careful and correct about their h’s as I was taught from my childhood upwards to be,—apart, I say, from this, Mr. Grant White’s idea, even if accepted, would give no explanation of the suppression of the h, still less of its forcible and wrongful introduction. So far from that, it would leave us two problems of immense difficulty to deal with.

First, it would be very much harder to explain the difference between England, on the one hand, and Ireland, America, and Australia, on the other; for how could correctness of speech have been derived from a people who all spoke incorrectly in this respect? Secondly, we should have to explain how it is that, although the h malady is incurable when once fairly established, there are, nevertheless, thousands of Englishmen, using their h’s correctly, who were lads at the time when Mr. Grant White says all Englishmen, even the best bred, dropped their h’s. To this must be added the truly surprising circumstance that we should have amended a fault thus universal without even a passing note in our general literature or in the press that so widespread an evil existed.

These considerations should suffice to overthrow Mr. Grant White’s theory, which every well-bred Englishman of middle age and beyond knows to be entirely erroneous. (Men of over eighty in England can tell Mr. White — I know it, because they have told me — that at good schools in England, seventyfive years ago, the same care was taken in teaching the correct use of the h as at the present day.) I need not, therefore, occupy much time to consider the evidence which he regards as establishing his position. Still it may be interesting to touch on his chief points.

He notes that no English writer of novels, tales, or humorous sketches, seventy-five years ago, makes fun of the h peculiarity. This proves, if it proves anything, that the suppression of the h was less common then in England than it is now; and this is well known (in England) to have been the case. The h malady has spread as the v-andw malady has died out, — why, I cannot say, but the fact is certain. The h malady existed, of course, but was not common enough to attract the attention of humorists, as it does now. (Nor were humorists such close observers then as now.)

Mr. Grant White’s attempt to prove that the h malady was common, because in the Bible “ an ” is often written before h, fails, when we consider that the distinctive use of an and a is a comparatively modern rule. Many still regard it as an unsatisfactory rule, — at least in its present general form. Any one who will repeat aloud, and with full voice, the sentence “ I stayed at a hotel commanding a horizon eighty miles away ” will see that the Englishman who writes “ an hotel,” as I often do, or “ an horizon,” as I almost always do, does not necessarily suppress the h. (I have often to use the word horizon, in lecturing, preceded by a or an, and nearly always I find that to give the h softly and correctly it is far easier to say “ an horizon ” than “ a horizon.”) He considers Miss Burney must have said an ’osier, because she wrote “ an hosier ; ” on the contrary, we may recognize in her use of an instead of a her care to avoid a gasping utterance of the aspirate. As for the Bible writers, the very existence of the letter h in the words Mr. Grant White quotes as preceded by an shows, when we consider the practical origin of spelling in English, that the h was sounded. It was probably sounded originally even in the words hour, humble, honest, etc.

I think, however, it has been sufficiently shown that the suppression of the h was a fault of slurring, a liberty arising from what may be called undue familiarity with the language, while the converse fault arose from a reaction against the other, and showed itself (as it still shows itself) only where an attempt was made at undue emphasis.

Richard A. Proctor.