For the record, I have been pronouncing the /h/ in 'herb' all my life - 'erb'
sounds so odd to my weird ears. I'm not British, but I do believe the Brits do
pronounce the /h/. I'm a native New Yorker (N.Y. City), but I don't know that
my pronunciation is typically New York-ish. Anybody know about this? Also, is
this really a grammar question? Even if it isn't, it's interesting.
Paul
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable
fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
________________________________
From: Carol Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, August 30, 2011 9:25:16 AM
Subject: Re: Dropping the h
Thank, you Herb! This is very informative. I was thinking that you probably
pronounce the /h/ in "Herb" but it is not prounounced in "herbs" as in "herbs
and spices."
Best-
Carol
--- On Mon, 8/29/11, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>From: STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Dropping the h
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Date: Monday, August 29, 2011, 11:45 PM
>
>
>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
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
>http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the
>list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/To join or leave this LISTSERV list,
>please visit the list's web interface at:
>http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the
>list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list,
>please visit the list's web interface at:
>http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the
>list"
>
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
