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Thursday 9 April 2020

A bright side: a rant.

Every inhabitant of the islands of Great Britain and Northern Island is hearing the initialism nhs (it stands for National Health Service) at least a dozen times a day at the moment.

Being a natural optimist, I can't help but hope that people might notice on just one of those many occasions that the h isn't pronounced haitch.

I wouldn't mind, but people keep correcting my pronunciation.

Word To Use Today: aitch. Most people agree that it doesn't involve any huffing at the beginning of the word (though about a quarter of English-speaking people disagree).

No one knows where the word comes from. The Latin form was something like aha, and over the centuries that might somehow squiggled its way to aitch on its way through France. Or perhaps the word aitch came from the Latin hic, here, and then into English via the French hache

The ch sound at the end of the word may have come into being when the letter h was followed by k in the alphabet, and the c or ch sound of the letter k was mistakenly attached to the letter h.



2 comments:

  1. That's interesting about NHS. I have only heard it with aitch too.

    I was going to say I always say aitch but I do say haitch in the phrase "It's not haitch, it's aitch."

    Some people think it can't be aitch because the letter name has to begin with the letter's sound. So that also means
    F = feff
    L = lel
    M = mem
    N = nen
    Q = koo (I think the w sound comes from the u)
    R = rah
    S = sess
    W = wouble u
    X = kseks
    Y = yi

    Megan with a mem

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cogently argued, Megan.
      Mind you, wouble u in particular might be an improvement.
      Kseks maybe not quite so much!

      Delete

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