I want to add another voice of thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to
articulate this information in an easy-to-understand format. This is NOT
above the heads of high school students, and I look forward to sharing it
with them! I think this would make a great "exploration of English" tidbit.

John

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 10:45 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Here’s a short treatment of initial <h> in English.  I’m taking a
> historical approach to the problem in part out of inclination—I do
> historical linguistics, but I also think understanding why orthographic
> initial <h> behaves a little oddly in English requires understanding its
> history.  In this discussion, I’m using the linguistic conventions of // to
> identify sounds and <> to identify letters.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> /h/ deletion is a bit messy.  One of the fundamental discoveries and
> principles of historical linguistics is that sound change is regular.  If a
> sound changes, it changes all across the language, not just in some words.
> For example, English /t/ has deleted consistently between a fricative (/th,
> f, s/) and /l/ or /n/, as in “listen,” “whistle,” “wrestle,” “often,” etc.
> However, social and other external pressures can interfere with this
> regularity, and that’s what’s happened with English initial /h/.  Old
> English had initial /h/ in words like “horse,” “heart,” “hand,” “hound,” and
> many others and did not drop it.  /h/ dropping didn’t begin till well after
> the Norman invasion and was influenced by French spelling.  English borrowed
> lots of French words spelled with initial <h>, a sound that was not, and is
> not today, pronounced in French.  In fact, those initial <h> had never been
> pronounced, not even when they originated in Latin, as most of them did.  So
> the words were borrowed without the initial /h/ sound but were spelled with
> the letter <h>.   ****
>
> ** **
>
> As literacy spread, English speakers who did not speak French confronted
> initial <h> that were pronounced and initial <h> that were not.  We still
> have this in words like “honor,” “honest,” and “hour,” all French loans that
> have remained /h/-less, unlike “hotel” and “hospital,” French loans that
> have gained an initial /h/.  The initial <h> that are now pronounced in loan
> words are examples of what’s called “spelling pronunciation,” the same force
> that leads people to pronounce the <t> in “often” or the <l> in “almond.”
> Spelling pronunciation applies haphazardly.  It’s not a form of regular
> sound change.  Rather, it a kind of hyper-correction.  In many cases, the
> initial /h/ has come to be accepted as standard, as in “history”; in others
> it has not.****
>
> ** **
>
> The difference between “an historic event,” without the /h/, and “a history
> of English,” with the /h/, shows how the /h/-less pronunciation of the
> loanword would lead to the use of the indefinite “an” and the definite /Di/,
> which sounds like “thee.”  What has happened with some words, like
> “history,” is that they have sounded the initial <h> through spelling
> pronunciation, and this change then analogizes to the adjective form so that
> it too is consonant-initial and takes the indefinite “a.”  ****
>
> ** **
>
> /h/-insertion, in those dialects of BrE English that have it, and this
> covers most of England, is a form of hypercorrection.  The speaker knows
> that in BBC English, for example, some <h> are pronounced and some are not,
> but the speaker doesn’t know which are which, and so he or she will tend to
> omit /h/ unless the word is emphasized, in which case an /h/ gets inserted
> whether it’s there in BBC English or not.  Like other examples of
> hypercorrection, this is not a rule-governed, regular phonological pattern.
> It varies with speakers and occasions.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> Herb****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Scott Catledge
> *Sent:* Monday, August 29, 2011 12:20 PM
>
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Dropping the h****
>
> ** **
>
> My MS Word did not like most of the discussion and left only a few
> sentences legible.****
>
> For this reason I may be repeating what others have said; if so , my
> apology.****
>
> ** **
>
> I keep the ‘h’ in “the historical” and drop it in “an historical.”  I say
> “a history.”  Why do****
>
> I not say “an history.”  The very presence of ‘an’ tells me that the ‘h’ in
> historical is****
>
> silent—but why?  I cannot think of another phrase comparable to “an
> historical”  ****
>
>  except ‘an hysterical.”  ****
>
> Can you?****
>
> ** **
>
> Norman Scott Catledge, PhD/STD****
>
> Professor Emeritus****
>
> history & languages****
>
> ** **
>
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