On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 23:31:29 +0100, Sacha
wrote:

~Mike Lyle22/4/04 5:20

~
~ Sacha wrote in message
~ .uk...
~ Kay Easton21/4/04 7:26
~ ~
~ In article , Sacha
~ writes
~ Jane Ransom21/4/04 4:06
~ ~
~
~ Oh certainly. But the letter H is the only letter of the alphabet that has
~ its own spelling and it is 'aitch' not 'Haitch'. ;-)
~
~ But 'haitch' is a regional thing, isn't it? West Midlands dialects. (you
~ must have heard a lot of it in your younger days!) Rather like 'ain't'.
~ And like 'It were' around here.
~
~
~ I don't remember it from my younger days but we didn't get out much. ;-)
~ To me, this is a fairly modern curse and seems to be all around us......
~
~ "Haitch" is pretty well the norm in Wales, even among highly-educated
~ speakers.
~
~I think Kay must be right and it's regional. But to me, it's a new and I'm
~sorry, yes, irritating habit.
~
~And, by the way, some of the other letters do have
~ spellings: we have "em" and "en", as well as "zed", but I suppose
~ "double-u" is cheating!
~
~ Mike.
~
~But look at how they appear in the dictionary. Go to the letter A and you
~will see 'Aitch' standing alone as "the eighth letter of the alphabet (H,h.)
~You will then go to Z and see it written as "Z (zed.....) got to 'M' (m,
~em) etc.
~IOW, only 'H' has a spelling, the others do not appear under a different
~initial letter. H does not appear as Haitch - in my Collins the entries
~under 'h' jump from 'hairst' to 'haith' to 'haji'. Sorry - but H is the
~only letter with its own spelling rather than pronunciation aid.
~Has it stopped raining yet? ;-)

Sacha, my Dad would hug you. He has gone on about precisely this with
exactly that reasoning for as long as I can remember - I think if I'd
have said haitch at any point in my formative years I'd have been
shot.

:-)


--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

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