Mike Lyle23/4/04 10:14
Sacha wrote in message
.uk...
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? ;-)
In the English-language game, never say "never"! Try Collins
21st-Century. The difference in initial letter is a red herring. The
letters of the Greek and other alphabets have names beginning with the
letter in question: no problem. And I don't recall saying it was
acceptable to write "haitch" for "aitch", and I don't think anybody
else did.
This started, or I thought it did before my headache started, too, with
'moot' versus 'mute' and 'bated' versus 'baited'. It's my fault for
'baiting' my hook with a red herring and waiting with 'bated breath' for the
outcome. ;-)
Nonetheless, the rules of lexicography are clear: the Oxford English
Dictionary almost certainly now includes "haitch", though perhaps with
a warning that it's non-standard. I can't check, as it's only
available on line at a price I can't afford. (Interestingly, the first
edition uses the spelling "aitch" in explanation, but hadn't found an
example of it, so the only full entry is for the spelling "ache".)
MIke.
That's it - I'm moving to Greece - and I definitely do feel old. ;-)
My shorter OED was published in 1983 and doesn't have 'haitch'. My
dictionary of English Etymology has neither. The latter has the 'aitch-bone'
but says it comes from the word 'nache' - old French and even older Latin.
--
Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)