User:Jnestorius/Haitch

No haitch

 * 1790s:


 * [H h pronounced "aitch"; also A "a as in Father"; G "gee or jee"; Q "cu"; Y "wi", Z "zee"


 * 1820s:


 * [English] h aitch

Haitch

 * 1820s:

"The 'Ractor' [John Williams; taught there 1824–1927] certainly had his peculiarities : “Go Junior, Yis, Yis, Yis," was often heard. “Don't you know the difference between the “haitch' and the 'no-haitch ?' he would say, when pitching into a boy for not sounding the aspirate in reading Greek. This aspirating the name of the English letter was amusing to us Scottish boys, who, whatever their sins are, never misplace their “hs." Is it a Welsh, as well as an English peculiarity; or did 'Punch' do it on purpose, for emphasis ? I never asked him."


 * 1833:


 * "Clericus" was Joshua Frederick Denham (1801–1861)

"But now I cannot avoid recommending to you a system of teaching the alphabet, which has recently become adopted in some few instances, which differs somewhat from the one usually adopted.

The cause of the alteration is this: that each of the consonants in the alphabet, and even in some degree the vowels also, are different as they are separately pronounced from the use which is made of them when conjoined with the vowels into a word. Suppose we take the word horn. Imagine what must be the difficulty upon the mind of your child, when he subsequently joins the letters together into the word, to find himself taught to say haitch, o, arr, en. The difficulty is this, that instead of having to pronounce them more quickly, in order to form the word, in the following manner, aitchoarren, he has further to learn to use only the initial sound of each of these letters, rejecting the intermediate letters, and to conjoin these into the word. Thus, the which is the initial sound of the haitch is all that is wanted, the o is simple, the rough sound is all he wants with the arr, and the partly dental and partly nasal sound of the en. Hence the desideratum is, so to teach the alphabet as to teach simply the sounds.

[...]

Now then imagine your child, having been taught in this mode, to spell the word horn, thus: a mere aspirate or breathing, o, a mere rumble, and the en, avoiding the vowel as much as possible. He will then not have to get rid in his memory of the useless lumber, appended to the breathing, as haitch, and to the letters r and n, but will join the sounds."

"Company "Haitch" (H), of which the writer at that date was a member, possibly represented more towns and countries than any other in the regiment. It was recruited speedily, and had in its ranks more men who had already served three months on the first call for troops than any other company. Among these were several first-class soldiers who had belonged to the Cambridge company (C), the first volunteer company raised and which was attached April 16, 1861, to the Third Regiment. Massachusetts Volunteers, and served at Fortress Monroe and vicinity with that regiment. H"aitch" of the Eighteenth was commanded by Capt. Joseph W. Collingwood of Plymouth, who was mortally wounded Dec. 13, 1862, in the charge on Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg. Its First Lieutenant was Charles H. Drew, a successful attorney-at-law, now in Boston and Justice of the Court at Brookline. Lieut. Drew had also served his three months in the "Standish Guards" of Plymouth in the Third Regiment. He likewise was in the charge at Marye's Heights as Captain of Company D, the Middleboro Company of the Eighteenth Regiment, and was very severely wounded while leading his command. Company "Haitch" could "lick" any in the regiment, at least one of its British-blooded members always so asserted after a visit to Gen. Blenker's "Garibaldians." They had been down there; we haven't. The visits of this member of our company kept the Surgeon's hand in. Each one was good for about a dozen scalp stitches. There was another Englishman in Company "Haitch" and, oh! how lazy and good natured. Surgeon Smith generally spoke low to suppress a defect in speaking. I took M-up at sick call one morning."
 * 1861–71:

"In pronunciation great changes have occurred and are still occurring, while many errors are familiar to all. The writer of this was taught to say Haitch for H, Keuf for Q, Ur for R, Iss for S, and Izzard for Z. These names are still taught—all but the last, in the public schools of California."

"The names of some of the letters have also been materially changed. Thus, Z has been named Izzard, Zed, and Zee, by successive generations of American school-boys; and H, which we pronounce aitch, was up to a recent period, and perhaps is at present, called haitch by the best English authorities."


 * 1880s:

"Mr. Spurrell, of Carmarthen, [William Spurrell?] has compiled a very useful little digest of the rules affecting the employment of the aspirate and the article. Misplacing the aspirate was, it seems, a fault from which the Carmarthen people were, until late years, entirely free, but which it is said the new generation is beginning to fall into: "The compilation has been issued," writes Mr. Spurrell, "in the hope of counteracting, in some degree, the corrupting influence of half-qualified masters in our elementary schools. A marked falling off in regard to words beginning with 'h' has taken place in our town during late years, and it seems to be attributable to the change made in the name of the letter. was taught to call the letter haitch. Now it is called after the English fashion aitch, and it appears that omitting the aspirate is thought to be giving the letter its proper power. For the first time in my life I last week heard my church publication, 'Yr Haul' called the aul by a boy in my office.""


 * 1890s:

"It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who, on a momentous occasion, had sown the seeds of secresy, sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle [her nurse] had become, at this time, after alterations of residence of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognize something that her nurse called “the important letter haitch.”"

Uncertainty

 * 1870:

"H IS a most extraordinary letter. Where did it come from? How is it spelt?—aitch, or haitch, with or without itself? It is not a vowel, and it is not a consonant, nor indeed a letter at all, only a "haspirate." Placed before the vowels, it lends them force and power; yet it cannot be sounded before any other letters, which are called "consonants," on that account."

[it might be spelt "haitch" with a silent h]

Unsorted

 * [BBC criticized by Queen's English Society]
 * [BBC criticized by Queen's English Society]
 * [BBC criticized by Queen's English Society]
 * [BBC criticized by Queen's English Society]