What about adding an "h"? My husband's family from eastern Kentucky added h's to many vowels. For example, my mother-in-law, when rocking a baby, would say "Bless h'its heart."  Why the "h" before a vowel?  

From: "Myers, Marshall" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, September 1, 2011 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: dropping the h

Herb,

Thanks,

Marshall

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 4:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: dropping the h

Marshal, 

"Humble" is another of those French loan words that came into English, in this case in the 13th c., without the /h/.  Some dialects kept it that way and some added the /h/.  It's pretty irregular.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Myers, Marshall
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 1:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: dropping the h

ATEG Members:

In the part of Kentucky I was reared there were speakers who did not pronounce the h in humble.

I wonder why that is? The speakers were native to the area, but who generally were not in the mainstream of other speakers in the area.

Marshall



-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R. Michael Medley (ck)
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 12:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: dropping the h

I appreciated Herb's historical tour of h-words in English.  It did seem, however, a round-about way of answering Scott's question.  I get Herb's point that the pronunciation of h or not is tied to individual speakers and speech contexts.  I feel comfortable with that answer.

However, Scott's speech seems to be showing a regular pattern.  He pronounces the h when the initial syllable of the word is stressed (as in a history book), but he elides it when the initial syllable is unstressed (as in an historical or an hysterical).  Did I miss something in the previous discussion that makes this answer seem too simple?

Another interesting h-word not mentioned so far is "herb."  My daughter-in-law, who grew up in the south of England and has retained a strong British accent, pronounces that word with the h, as we would pronounce Herb Stahlke's name. Do many Americans use h-sound when talking about "herbs and spices"?

R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University

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