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Title: The letter H: past, present, and future : A treatise: with rules for the silent H. based on modern usage; and notes on WH
Author: Leach, Alfred
Language: English
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AND FUTURE ***
THE LETTER _H_.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
=HARRY HAWKINS’S H-BOOK=; showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s.
Eighth Thousand. Sewed, 6d.
“We commend the little work to the notice of all masters and
mistresses.”—_Teacher._
=A WORD TO THE WISE, OR HINTS ON THE CURRENT= Improprieties of
Expression in Writing and Speaking. By PARRY GWYNNE. Fifteenth
Thousand. 18mo, sewed 6d., or cloth, gilt edges, 1s.
“All who wish to mind their _p’s_ and _q’s_ should consult this little
volume.”—_Gentleman’s Magazine._
=A COMPENDIOUS GRAMMAR, AND PHILOLOGICAL HAND=book of the English
Language, for the Use of Schools and Candidates for the Army and
Civil Service Examinations. By JOHN GEORGE COLQUHOUN, Esq.,
Barrister-at-Law. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d.
“A real and very useful accession to the list of English
manuals.”—_Educational Times._
“We are not acquainted with any single volume that in such a small
compass contains so much useful information.”—_Scholastic Register._
“Just the book we should like to see in Training Colleges, and placed in
the hands of Pupil Teachers.”—_National Schoolmaster._
GRIFFITH AND FARRAN,
WEST CORNER ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, LONDON.
E. P. DUTTON AND CO., NEW YORK.
THE LETTER =H=
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
A Treatise:
WITH RULES FOR THE SILENT _H_, BASED ON MODERN USAGE;
AND NOTES ON _WH_.
BY ALFRED LEACH.
A breath can make them....
GOLDSMITH.
[Illustration: Logo]
GRIFFITH & FARRAN
SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS,
WEST CORNER ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, LONDON
E. P. DUTTON & CO., NEW YORK
MDCCCLXXX.
_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._
PREFACE.
The contradictory rules that are given for the employment of H’s, and
the confusion that reigns in our best Pronouncing Dictionaries,
constitute an apology for the appearance of this publication. To promote
an uniform pronunciation based on the sole authority of contemporary
usage, is one of its purposes. To draw attention to the nature of the
present English Aspirate, is another. To seek redress for the digraph
WH, is a third. To render the subjects as interesting to the general
reader as the matter would allow, has been the great desire of the
writer.
It is with gratitude that I beg to express my thanks to the gentlemen
whose kind courtesy I have acknowledged on page 56; and to Professor
Bain, Professor Skeat, and His Eminence Cardinal Archbishop Manning, to
whose kindness I am indebted for assistance in the form of valuable
comments and advice. I beg also to thank the Rev. W. H. Bleaden, curate
to the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney; and John Davidson, Esq., Memb.
Arts Club, London, for the friendly help they have given me.
A. L.
YUDU VILLA, THORNTON HEATH,
_October 1880_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREAMBLE, 9
ORIGIN AND DESCENT, 17
Original Alphabets—Primitive forms of H—Classic Forms.
DISTRIBUTION, 22
Phonetic Significance of Early H’s—Aryan and Other H’s.
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH H, 27
Raucity of the Anglo-Saxon H—Norman Influences—Decline of the
English H.
MODERN ASPIRATES, 35
Definitions—Terms of Convenience—Varieties of H—Vocalized and
Unvocalized Breath—The H in Speech—Physiological Phonation of
Aspirated Vowels.
SILENT H, 46
Orthoepists—Early Records of Silent H’s—Modern Pronouncing
Dictionaries—Modern Usage—An American Hypothesis Considered.
DIGRAPHS, 62
Review of the Principal Digraphs of H—The Perfect Digraph
WH—Phonic Analysis of W—WH=ʍ=An Unvocalized W.
PERMUTATION, 76
Philological Science—Grimm’s Law—The Future of H.
APPENDIX, 82
Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A., on Silent H’s.
PREAMBLE.
A writer in a high-class American periodical[1] recently expressed his
surprise that no English orthoepist or phonologist had made the subject
of Aspirates and their misuse one of examination, or of more than a mere
passing remark. True it is that in works where dissertations on single
vowels occupy pages, and paragraph after paragraph teems with analyses
of individual consonants, “poor letter H” is often summed up in a
sentence. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that, socially, H is of
English letters the most important, and that a systematic trifling with
half the vowels and consonants of the alphabet would not be visited with
such severe social reprobation as is the omission or misplacement of an
H.
The fraternity of English Grammarians have, it might seem, conspired to
withhold from us the means of propitiating this demon Aspirate, which a
study of its attributes would afford. _Mr Punch_, that excellent censor
of British manners and customs, has been the chief (not to say only)
constant attendant to the English H-evil; but the fleam of his satire—an
instrument as powerful, and often more effective, than the Thor-hammer
of the _Times_—has scarified the abusers of H, without removing much of
the abuse.
The American writer alluded to above enters, with the characteristic
daring of his countrymen, upon the treacherous grounds of statistical
definition, and states that, in England, “of the forty millions of
people, there cannot be more than two millions who are capable of a
healthy, well-breathed H.” He is treading in safer paths when he says:
There is a gradation, too, in the misuse of this letter. It is silent
when it should be heard, but it is also added, or rather prefixed, to
words in which it has no place. Now the latter fault is the sign and
token of a much lower condition in life than the former.
He appears, however, to write in ignorance of the customs of many good
speakers, and of the opinions of several English orthoepists, when he
adds: “Only Englishmen of the very uppermost class and finest breeding
say _h_ome and _h_otel; all others, _’ome_ and _’otel_” Further on, he
says:
H, in speech, is an unmistakable mark of class distinction in England,
as every observant person soon discovers. I remarked upon this to an
English gentleman, an officer, who replied—‘It’s the greatest blessing
in the world; a sure protection against cads. You meet a fellow who is
well-dressed, behaves himself decently enough, and yet you don’t know
exactly what to make of him; but get him talking, and if he trips upon
his H’s that settles the question. He’s a chap you’d better be shy
of.’
This writer’s friend, the “English gentleman,” is spokesman to a large
class. As the chemist employs a compound of sulphur in order to decide
by the reaction whether a substance belongs to the group of higher or of
baser metals, so does society apply the H-test to unknown individuals,
and group them according to their comportment under the ordeal. There
can be no doubt that a tendency of the age is to over-rate the value of
H as a critical test for refinement and culture.
Although instances of well-educated persons who aspirate their vowels
wrongly are extremely rare, the partial or even complete omission of
Aspirates is far from being an absolute criterion of ignorance or
vulgarity. The writer has in his mind’s eye a very excellent and
scholarly gentleman, one of the high dignitaries of an order of
professional speakers, who, by strange anomaly, is a sad non-conformist
in the matter of H’s. But—need one add?—such deviations from rule are as
rare in their occurrence as the credentials of learning and social rank
must be exceptional that can obtain forgiveness for them in society; and
any man about to choose for himself an eccentricity is not advised to
select the uncommon one of erudite H-dropping.
The prevalent disregard shewn for the rules of aspiration by classes of
moderately well-educated persons, may be traced to several causes. Young
children do not manifest any fine appreciation of the difference between
aspirated and unaspirated vowels, and readily acquire a tendency to
neglect or misuse the H, so that, unless correctness of aspiration be
made a canon of the nursery, these infantile transgressions are liable
to develop into deeply rooted habit. At a great many middle and lower
class schools H-dropping is fostered rather than destroyed; the boys,
with all that ingenuous ruffianism that preceding generations so admired
in the youth of Britain, discountenance _forcibly_ anything like
“affectation,” and, if H-droppers be in the majority, render it
expedient in the youthful orthoepist to sink his singularity of right in
deference to the dominant powers of wrong. A correct pronunciation, when
once discarded, is not easily regained—lost H’s have a knack of turning
up in wrong places, when they return at all. Schoolmasters are not
always models of correctness, and a staff of H-dropping ushers is not
likely to impress school-boys with a regard for the Aspirate. Nor is it
only in educational institutes of an inferior order that neglect, and
even intolerance, is shewn respecting the full and proper employment of
H. The writer could point out more than one of our very best English
schools where (within the last three decades) school-boy tyranny forbade
that WH should be pronounced other than W; and “wip” and “weel” were the
only recognized renderings of _whip_ and _wheel_. The uncertainty
attending the words in which the H should be silent, is doubtless also
partly accountable for its indiscriminate employment.
Before inquiring into the history and nature of Aspirates and their
symbols, it may not be uninteresting to take a cursory glance at the
extraordinary misuse of H in the Metropolis. The “Cockney Problem” has
long been a puzzle to all except superficial observers. One may
speculate reasonably as to the probable cause of the Londoner dropping
his H’s when he ought to aspirate them; but why he persists in placing
H’s where they should not be, seems beyond the powers of reason to
explain. The problem is not solved by saying that an H is prefixed in
order to emphasize certain words in a sentence, unless at the same time
it can be shown that the speaker is consistent in his manner of using
it, and that he is not in the habit of putting H’s before unemphatic
words. This cannot be shown; whereas the reverse can be demonstrated. To
take an extreme instance: the Cockney will wrongly aspirate even the
little words of a metrical composition, which are neither important nor
emphatic; and this, moreover, when they are out of accent. In his
colloquial speech, _Horkney hoysters_, _’amshire ’am_, and _’am and
heggs_, are expressions he employs with a provoking impartiality for the
proper and improper use of the H. Stress may have something to do with
some of these anomalous uses of the Aspirate, but to what extent is very
far from clear. Eggs are perhaps brought more to the fore by becoming
_heggs_, and an H may add to the importance of oysters; but by what
occult method of ratiocination he vindicates his invidious distinction
between the rightful claims of ham and the imaginary requirements of
eggs must be left for those to explain who can. Various are the
suggestions that have been made relative to this phenomenon of misplaced
H’s; and if assurance could constitute authority, or the outcome of
guess-work be accepted as proof, many of the suggestions would be amply
supported in their demands for universal regard and acceptance. Some
have believed that aspiration of the vowels is dictated solely by a
desire to improve their sounds; others, that a tendency exists to
aspirate every initial vowel (as in Hindostanee), but that exceptions
are made wherever they favour fluency and adapt themselves to ease of
articulation. Some, again, say that a pervert method of aspirating had
an early origin and has undergone a process of gradual development until
the acme of depravity has been reached by the present generation. Or, to
add to the list, one might submit that the employment of H’s is
subjected merely to the purposeless choice of individual speakers; but
that the habit of class-conformity, so inherent in Londoners, is the
cause of the prevalent misuse of the Aspirate by certain portions of the
community. Each of these theories, however, is found, when tested, to be
of very restricted application, or little other than hypothesis: the
Emphatic Theory must be acknowledged to be weak; that of Euphony jars
with fact; the Theory of Adaptation is observed to disagree with
practice; the Theory of Development has no historical basis; and that of
Elective Aspiration is arbitrary, and would compel us to renounce our
speculations concerning a subject it cannot satisfactorily explain.
One may ask and attempt to answer the question: Why has H-dropping been
made the butt of ridicule in the present century only? Perhaps one
reason is that, formerly, the words in which silent H’s were expected to
occur were slightly more numerous and even less clearly agreed upon than
they are to-day. But a better explanation may be that the H of the past
was too distinctly audible to be omitted or inserted unconsciously;
whereas the modern dropper of H’s is ludicrous in that he remains in
blissful ignorance of his errors. It is certain that had H-dropping
struck our forefathers as risible, or ridiculous, or had it been
regarded as the trade-mark of vulgarity, it would have been made capital
of by the satirists of the period. During the latter half of the last,
and beginning of the present century, however, the strong English H gave
place to the delicate vowel-aspirate, with all the anarchial confusion
of laws, use, license and abuse which accompanies it to-day; and the H
became appreciable to refined ears only.
ORIGIN AND DESCENT.
Many attempts have been made to discover the origin of Chirography—the
art of writing. Looking back, far back, over the populous plains of
Time, the eye of Research seems to have perceived four or five germinal
spots whence sprang the primitive parents of all known Alphabets.
The early “untutored savage,” who chanced to be provided with an idea he
deemed worth recording for the benefit of his fellows, had recourse to
what artistic talent he possessed, and roughly expressed his idea in the
language of permanent sign. Two circumstances will have conspired to
lighten his labours: the first, that a habit of making known his ideas
by means of an outward code of signals, will perhaps, have been even
more familiar to him than that of expressing them through the medium of
speech; the second, that the burden of his thoughts will not have been
heavy with deep or intricate abstractions difficult to express. His rude
inscriptions gave rise, in course of time, to the word-painting of
China, the picture-writing of Mexico, and to the hieroglyphs of Egypt.
Our business is with the last.
The truncated sparrows and _cavo rilievo_ crocodiles, constituting the
sculptured eloquence of the ancient Egyptians, were found too cumbersome
for general purposes; so they ultimately became converted into two
varieties of a running hand—the _hieratic_ and the _demotic_ characters.
These were Alphabets. One of the characters—a figure suggestive of a
circle, of dissolute habits, with a stroke through it—seems to have been
the founder of the House of H. The latest edition of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, however, gives [Illustration: symbol] as being the earliest
representative of the H’s. The character first alluded to had this form,
[Illustration: symbol]. The Phœnicians, who derived their Alphabet from
Egypt, appear to have been desirous of “squaring the circle,” for in
their hands this became [Illustration: symbol], or [Illustration:
symbol]. The Greek letter was at first [Illustration: symbol]; but later
on it changed its appearance, becoming H. As such it figures in the
Sigean inscription of the sixth century, B.C. Had the Greeks imported
their letters directly from Egypt, one might have supposed _theta_ (Θ,
or θ), and not _eta_ (Η), to have been the immediate descendant of the
Egyptian symbol given above. The Samaritan [Illustration: symbol], the
Chaldean and square Hebrew ח (_cheth_ or _heth_), bear marks of a common
origin with the Phœnician H, although their general appearance has been
brought into conformity with the general appearance of the alphabets to
which they respectively belong.
The astonishing changes of shape seen in early letters, are also
accounted for by the nature of the processes by which they were usually
formed, as when a scribe would endeavour to write quickly with a metal
style on a soft tablet; or an explanation of them may be found in the
alterations that will, from time to time, have suggested themselves to
the fancy of the calligraphist. Extreme credulity and extreme scepticism
are, as a rule, found blended in the natures of those people who refuse
to believe that a chain can have existed if any of its links happen to
be lost; and lest any such persons find the differences of form in the
above H’s to be an obstacle to a belief in their descent from a common
ancestor, some specimens of evolution quite as wonderful are selected
from more modern typography, and given below—
[Illustration: Decorative H's]
Tradition asserts that the Greeks received their alphabet from the
Phœnician Cadmus (1493 B.C.). There is reason to believe that H had its
formal representative among their oldest letters, although Pliny states
it to have been introduced after the Trojan War. Mr H. N. Coleridge[2]
says, with regard to the Greek:—“After Η (or η) was appropriated to
express the long E, the rough breathing was not indicated in writing at
all till the time of Aristophanes of Byzantium, who divided the H, and
made one-half of it ([Illustration: aspirate]) the mark of the aspirate,
and the other half of it ([Illustration: lene]) that of the _lene_. By
degrees these marks became [Illustration: symbol] and [Illustration:
symbol]; and hence, in the cursive character ‛ and ’ marking the
vowels.” These last signs (‛ and ’), Professor Geddes humorously styles,
“the ghosts of a vanished consonant.”
“This practice of spiritualizing, or of sending letters aloft, that were
supposed to have a turn for climbing, has always existed in languages
(_Encyclop. Brit._, 1842).” As examples we have the two dots ¨ and the
line ¯ that hover over some words, and may generally be recognised as
being the shades of a departed _e_.
The Romans derived their alphabet from the Greeks; and the Roman
characters are those now in general European use.
The claims of H to a high respectability are conclusively established by
a genealogical review of its ancient lineage. It may be that
“Some storied urn, or animated bust”
may yet be the means of calling back the forms and “fleeting breath” of
many of the unknown and rude forefathers of H, that are now lying in the
great mysterious Asiatic burial ground.
DISTRIBUTION.
Our attention may now advert to the phonetic significance and
distribution of the symbols of which we have just considered the
historical aspect.
The sounds represented by the earliest alphabetical characters can only
be a subject for conjecture; the sounds of those we have had under
consideration were probably very pronounced, ranging from that of a
strongly guttural _kch_, to that of the jerked breath occurring in a
short, emphatic, English “bah!”
We have seen that the Greek character was early mutilated; but the
rough-breathing powers of the Greek Η were transferred to the sign ‛ and
we may conclude that the Greeks were at one time very partial to the
_asper_, their writers finding it necessary to prefix a special sign,
the _lene_ (’), when vowels were _not_ to be aspirated.
In Latin also the H was at first harsh; but later on indications occur
of the decline and fall of the Roman H in the fact of Quintilian
complaining of the h-dropping propensities of his contemporaries. In his
time, Latin writers already affected great freedom even in the
orthography of words containing an H; its presence or absence in such
words as _honestus_, _ahænus_, &c., being apparently viewed with
considerable indifference. Cicero strongly censures its gratuitous
introduction into words. The Romans are thus responsible for ancient (if
not venerable) precedents in eclectic H-dropping.
The Sclav and Latin languages have treated the Aspirate with spare
courtesy, having let it become the mere “shadow of a sound,” or allowed
the letter to dwindle into an altogether insignificant symbol. In
Italian, “that soft bastard Latin,” the H is practically a dead letter,
and has left no legitimate offspring. The Tuscan dialect, however, has
afforded a local habitation to all the banished H’s of Italy; and the
saying, “_Lingua toscana in bocca romana_,” may be held to be an
indirect allusion to the dislike that the Italians bear to the Aspirate.
In French, the H is never an Aspirate; it merely _hardens_ the vowels in
certain words, _e.g._, _haie_, _hameau_, _hieroglyphe_, &c., and its
office is a sinecure in others. When it hardens a vowel, it forbids a
_liaison_ with the last consonant of the preceding word. But in Spain,
letter H is treated with systematic barbarity. Not only is its presence
disregarded, but, since the days of the Almoravids (eleventh century),
or even from an earlier date, its rightful office as an Aspirate has
been usurped by letter J. Besides this, its literal identity has been
allowed to get confusedly mixed up with that of the letter F; so that
Latin words while undergoing the process of acclimatization on Spanish
soil have been observed to exchange an H for an F, _e.g._, Lat.,
_facere_ = Sp., _hacer_, which is nevertheless pronounced “acer.” A
reverse permutation occurred in the Sabine _fircus_ (a buck) and the
Latin _hircus_.
The Slavonic tongues are weak or deficient in H’s. In Russian H has the
value of N.
Turning to the Teutonic and Keltic stocks, one notices a marked contrast
in the fortunes of H. In High German it has retained an important and
prominent position; although, generally speaking, it is less conspicuous
in Low German tongues. The simple Aspirate, and the other and harsher
varieties of H, were universally received into the Keltic languages; the
Cymric branch shewing a slight preference for the former, and the Gaelic
for the more guttural variety. Prof. Geddes remarks: “The Gaelic
alphabet contains a letter to which, apart from a partial parallel in
Greek, I am not aware of an exact parallel in any tongue. It begins no
words, heads no vocabulary in the dictionary, and yet is found
everywhere diffused over a Gaelic page.” Something partly similar
appears to exist in Sanscrit, a highly aspirated language with seemingly
no purely initial H. Max Müller[3] and most other writers give
[Illustration: Sanskrit H] as being the Sanskrit H, whereas some affirm
it more properly to represent _gh_.
Arabic and other Shemitic languages abound with Aspirates; in the
former, at least, they do stalwart service. Throughout that large group
of languages which resist systematic classification, and are chiefly
known through the works of Tylor, Lubbock, and others, or still more
recently through the agency of the missionaries,—_e.g._, the languages
of North America and of Polynesia—Aspirates are copiously distributed.
The Maoris are wont to substitute an H for several of the European
speech-sounds, against which their vocal organs rebel.
In English, the omission of H’s that ought to be heard, is peculiar to
England, and especially marked in London and the Southern counties. The
Lowland Scotch are free from the defect; and the people of the Highland
districts and the North run to the opposite extreme, and give to their
H’s a strong guttural sound. The Irish and Welsh are also free from it.
Men of English parentage and American birth, New Englanders, Virginians,
&c., are correct in their use of the Aspirate (vide _Atlantic Monthly_,
No. 269). That the Americans are without this H-trait, may be accounted
a result of the predominance of North British and Irish immigrants.
His Eminence Cardinal Manning, when favouring the writer with some
valuable notes on the subject of Aspirates, gave, as his opinion, that
the dropping of H’s in England cannot be explained by foreign
influences. The Aspirate is put on and put off in certain counties—as in
Middlesex and Gloucestershire—with long local traditions; and he
believes that, like the Greek digamma, it refuses all submission to
criticism.
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH H.
There is something startling in the announcement that were William
Shakespeare to hear one of his plays read by a good speaker of our own
day, it would be less intelligible to him than if spoken in the
Somersetshire dialect. So great is the change in English pronunciation.
This fact prepares us for the discovery that great alterations have
taken place in the significance of individual letters; and that the
phonetic value of letter H has changed also.
Dr Johnson, in 1755, wrote: “Grammarians of the last age directed that
_an_ should be used before H, whence it appears that the English
anciently aspirated less.”
“The great Doctor uttered many hasty things.”—
_Thackeray._
Dr Johnson’s suppressed premiss is negatived by his own _protégé_,
Goldsmith, in whose writings _an_ occurs before every variety of H; a
fact which shows that _an_ and the Aspirate were not generally
considered to be incompatibles. That their juxtaposition does not of
itself offend the modern ear, may be proven by uttering the words “_than
have_” and “_they have_,” in which the Aspirate is heard to follow the
_n_ and the vowel-sound with equal grace and fluency. There are,
moreover, many reasons for entertaining an opinion directly opposed to
that expressed by the great lexicographer; and for believing the powers
of the English H to have been steadily on the decline since the days of
primitive English. In all Aryan languages, H has a tendency to mollify
and decay; and its powers are always found to be most strongly marked in
Germanic tongues that are in nearest historical relation with their
common Teutonic ancestor.
Inductively, one is led to believe that the English Aspirate is less
strong than formerly. This belief will acquire support from the
following argument:—
It will be remembered that prior to the introduction of terminal rhymes,
the laws of Prosody were based upon principles slightly different from
those of to-day; our ancestors, preferring an identity of
consonant-sounds to an assonance of vowels, required that syllables to
rhyme should _begin_ with the same letter—the system being known as
ALLITERATION. If we bear in mind how much must have depended on the
distinctness and strength of the alliterative rhymes of early verse,
where the metrical management and rhythmical cadence were far from being
irreproachable, we shall readily concede that the bard will have
selected for his use the strongest and most distinct rhymes that the
language could supply. “Rhymes to the eye,” as they are called, would
have been utterly useless, from the fact of poetry being then composed
for oral rendering, and the hearers generally ignorant of spelling. It
is, therefore, agreeable to reason to conclude that all sounds employed
in alliterative rhyming were distinctly audible, strong, and emphatic.
Now, on looking over alliterative verses of the seventh to thirteenth
centuries, one cannot fail to be struck by the frequent occurrence of
rhymed H’s: their proportion being, in many poems, in excess of that of
any other letter. Modern poets, it is true, have not unfrequently
pressed H into service as an alliterative rhyme, but in so doing they
have afforded ample proof of the inefficiency of the modern English
Aspirate, when acting in that capacity. One of the best specimens of
modern alliterative H-rhymes is that in one of Moore’s American poems:—
“And I said, ‘If there’s peace to be found in the world,
A _h_eart that is _h_umble might _h_ope for it _h_ere.’”
But the alliteration is scarcely appreciable, unless the rendering be
accompanied by undue aspiratory efforts. Whenever we hear a run of words
rhyming alliteratively in H, it is highly probable that only half the
pleasure we experience is conveyed to us by ear, and that the other half
is of a subjective nature, and arises from our _knowing_ the letter H to
enter into the formation of the words, and the alliteration would be
almost lost to us were we ignorant of their orthography. Hence, it is
rather from an association of ideas, than from an effect produced on the
organs of hearing, that we derive the pleasure; and the modern H,
indicating as it does merely a like modification in the phonation of the
several vowels to which it is prefixed, cannot be regarded as having a
_distinct sound_ of its own, nor, consequently, as constituting a
perfect alliterative rhyme. Do not the mute H’s of the following words
give results nearly as satisfactory as the H’s in the above quotation?—
The _h_eir that is _h_onest will _h_onour the _h_our!
Considering, then, the faintness and the nature of the Aspirate of
to-day, and its insufficiency for purposes of alliteration, we seem at
liberty to conclude that the Anglo-Saxon and Early English H, so much
affected of the early poets, was stronger than our own, and had, in all
probability, retained much of the pristine power of its Teutonic
harshness.
That the sound of the Anglo-Saxon H bore a resemblance to that of an
unvocalized _y_ (see page 37), is made manifest by the free interchange
of _h_ and _y_ in ancient MSS. The substitution of surds for sonants,
and _vice versâ_, is common to the early stages of the development of
all orthographical codes.
Mr Ellis, whose researches have thrown great light on these matters,
gives as his opinion—
_In Anglosaxon, a final_ h _was equal to the_ ch _of lo_ch_, or German
da_ch_. In the thirteenth century the sound of_ H _seems to have been
very uncertain, and in the fourteenth it was lost in those words
before which a vowel was elided. In the sixteenth it was pronounced or
not, differently from the present custom._[4]
There exists a belief—perhaps on no very firm foundation—that the
Normans could not, or would not, aspirate their H’s; and the idea gains
some support in the period of decadence of the strong English H having
commenced subsequently to the Norman invasion. It is, however, not easy
to understand how these Norsemen should have learned to entirely abandon
the use of H in consequence of a century and a half’s residence in
Neustria. Salesbury, a Welsh linguist, exhumed by Mr Ellis, implies
moreover that, as late as the sixteenth century, the French still
aspirated at least _some_ of their H’s, and Littré, in his admirable
dictionary, declares the Norman Aspirate to be in a state of good
preservation (“_très-nettement conservé_”) in our own day. The old Norse
H had been, according to Rask, Grimm, and Ellis, a vigorous and thriving
aspirate; Rapp gives it as having been equal to _kh_. But presuming
that, prior to the Invasion, the Normans had become droppers of H’s,
would enable one to account for the unsettled state of the English H in
the thirteenth century, when English reappeared as a national speech
(1258). Also, according to this latter view, a habit of not aspirating
would have been greatly in vogue for a time, and for a Saxon to have
dropped his H’s would have been equivalent to an announcement of good
breeding and aristocratic acquaintances, or of his being in the habit of
frequenting the court and other haunts of the Norman nobility. But when
the language of the vanquished began to overcome that of the conqueror,
the Aspirate must have entered upon a new era, and H’s again have
prevailed in the land. Still the new H had not the vigour of the old
one—the guttural of the Anglo-Saxon. In the fourteenth century, as
mentioned by Mr Ellis, its employment was subject to various rules; and
this will have probably been the period during which the first mute H’s
received public recognition, being tolerated as a sort of compromise or
concession made to an aristocracy little partial to H’s. Throughout the
remaining centuries there have been rules of some sort governing—though
very laxly—the employment of the Aspirate. But the powers of H were
gradually, surely, and steadily waning, until, at length, its strong
guttural sound finally and completely evanesced towards the latter half
of last century.
Presuming that the reader consents to recognise the antique origin, the
unbroken line of descent, and the rough, sturdy ancestry of our English
H, it may be interesting to notice that in 1847 appeared the second
edition of a critical work on the English Language,[5] written in German
(by a fellow of Cambridge), purporting among other things to prove to
the omniscient Teuton, that in England the aspiration of H’s is
altogether a modern invention, a fanciful outcome of recent orthoepical
dogmatism; and that by good speakers it is practically ignored.
Concerning this writer, Mr Ellis says, “His principal argument is the
retention of _an_, _mine_, _thine_, &c., before words beginning with H,
in the authorised version of 1611. The lists of words with mute H given
by Palgrave, Salesbury, &c., were of course unknown to him. If, however,
he had been aware of the loose manner in which H is inserted and omitted
in Layamon, the ‘Genesis and Exodus,’ Prisoner’s Prayer, and other
writings of the thirteenth century, he would doubtless have considered
his point established. In practice, I understand from a gentleman who
conversed with him, he omitted the H altogether.”
MODERN ASPIRATES.
The English H has been variously classified, and still more variously
and vaguely defined. Some phonologists have discovered in it the
properties of a vowel; most have agreed to regard it as a consonant.
Webster declared it to be “not strictly a vowel nor an articulation, but
a letter _sui generis_”—a negative classification that may be accepted
to-day. The letter has been termed the symbol of a guttural breathing,
an evanescent breathing, a mere breathing, a strong breathing, a
whisper, and “a propulsed aspiration” (_B. H. Smart_); and some affirm
it to be “no sound at all.”
The English H represents an action rather than a sound. When the action
indicated accompanies the utterance of a vowel, a change is produced in
the vowel-sound; hence, Bishop Wilkins (1668) called the H a “guttural
vowel”—not, however, a particularly happy definition.
In stating H to be “a letter _sui generis_,” Webster enounced a truth
that many have seemed inclined to overlook. Consonants are distinct
sounds that precede or follow other consonants and vowels; but the
Aspirate becomes part of any vowel it accompanies. This may be otherwise
expressed by saying, that in aspirating we emit a noiseless current of
unvocalised breath that gradually vocalises itself into an aspirated
vowel. The truth of the assertion may be tested by pronouncing an
aspirated vowel, _e.g._, “=ha=,” and observing that no change in
position of the vocal organs occurs during the act. In uttering a
syllable consisting of a consonant and a vowel, a change of position is
requisite to the formation of each constituent element—for example, in
the case of “=fa=.” Thus then, the H in well-spoken English does not
represent a distinct and independent sound; but prescribes a breathing
that modifies the vowel it accompanies. It is A SIGNAL TO ASPIRATE THE
SUCCEEDING VOWEL.
This oneness of the vowel and its H is productive of a change in the
natures of both. The _a_ in “h_a_ll” is as different from that in
“_a_ll,” as is the Aspirate of “_h_all” from that of “_h_eel.” It
follows, therefore, that these Aspirates are equal in number to the
vowel-sounds (said to be about seventeen), and that the letter H
represents them all. For convenience sake, one speaks of “the sound of
an H,” “to pronounce, or aspirate an H,” and “to drop an H;” meaning
respectively, _the sound of an aspirated vowel_, _to aspirate_, and _to
omit to aspirate a vowel with an H before it_.
As already submitted, most H’s may, now-a-days, be said to be
_soundless_, although not “Silent H’s;” the latter might with more
propriety be termed functionless letters. To soundless H’s one exception
distinctly occurs in English; to wit, the H that precedes the long _ū_,
as in _hue_, _huge_, _humor_, &c. This H—a phonetic link between the
ancient English H’s and the modern Aspirate—has a sound of its own, and
may be heard. Elevating the base of the tongue so as to leave a narrow
aperture between its centre and the palate, we emit, with vocalized
breath, the sound _y_ heard in _yew_; with breath that is _not_
vocalized we produce the subdued, palatal grating sound constituting the
H of _hue_. Hence, HŪ represents a vowel _preceded by an audible_ H, and
not a vowel-sound that is aspirated. The Arabic ﺡ corresponds to the H
of HŪ.
Other kinds and degrees of H are enumerated by Mr Ellis, who gives a
list of six. They vary in power from that of the scarcely audible
aspiration that the Cockney introduces into “park” (paahk), to that of
the jerked breath that _h‘_ represents in _bah‘_. The breathings of the
different H’s vary also in degree of intensity according to the nature
and strength of their vowels; being most pronounced in the case of long
and open vowels,—compare “_h_ard” and “_h_it.”
Some writers have described aspirated vowels as being whispered vowels.
The error of this description is obvious to the most superficial
observer; it would mean that aspirated vowels are unvocalized. A man,
moreover, need not drop his H’s though he holloa through a speaking
trumpet.
=Vocalized breath= is that which carries with it a sound produced by
vibrations of the vocal chords. These are situate in the larynx, and
may be felt vibrating, by placing the hand on the throat while they
are in action. “Krantzenstein and Kempelen have pointed out that the
conditions necessary for changing one and the same sound into
different vowels, are difference in the size of two parts—the oral
canal and the oral opening,” (_vide_ Kirkes’ Physiology). Some
consonants are produced by this kind of breath, but with the
concurrence also of certain movements of the lips, tongue, &c., and
they are called _sonants_ or _voiced consonants_: Ex.—_l_, _n_, _r_,
&c.
=Unvocalized breath= is that employed in whispering. With the
assistance of certain movements of the speech-organs, unvocalized
breath produces in ordinary speech a class of consonants that are
called _surds_ or _breathed consonants_: Ex.—_f_, _s_, _t_, &c.
NOTE.—_T_ is of the class called _momentary_ or _explosive_
consonants. They need the help of a vowel, or of a voiced consonant,
in order to express themselves fully. This circumstance, together with
the fact of vocalised breath entering into the formation of many
consonants, will probably account for the common notion that _no_
consonant can be uttered without a _vowel_ accompaniment. The
independence of the sibilant _s_, offers alone a sufficient refutation
of the assumption. It is in Polynesia that savages are found who
cannot put two consonants together without a vowel between them.
Æsthetically considered, the modern English H is an important
embellishment, and adds immensely to the strength and pleasing effect of
speech. The Aspirate can render certain discordant sounds of our
language half euphonious, breathing gently on a hard vowel, deepening
its tone and swelling its volume. As an instance, take the pronoun _I_
and the adjective _high_; and notice that the vowel-sound in the latter
is by far the more pleasing, approaching almost that of the soft _ai_ of
the Italian. In oratory, a preponderance of aitch’d words in a passage
allows of great energy of utterance without risk of it degenerating into
an affected or bombastic tirade of “big-sounding” words.
H is an earnest letter. It is a noteworthy coincidence that a large
portion of those words associated with strong and violent actions and
emotions have the Aspirate: _hew_, _heave_, _hate_, _abhor_, &c.,
together with the ejaculations, _Ho!_ _Ha!_ _Hollo!_ _Harrah!_ _Hang
it!_ (an exclamation used by Geo. Wither, born A.D. 1588), &c., are
examples. In Elocution, the Aspirate lends itself to the expressing of
propinquity, bringing the scene and the sound of the action within a
more proximate compass. The union of H with most consonants results in
the production of smooth sounds. The euphonic “sweetnesses” of Mr
Swinburne’s richly mellifluent verse, will be found, on analysis, to
depend greatly on the two powers of TH and those of other digraphs of H.
Writers on the subject of Natural Significance, or Specific Import of
Articulate Sounds, who have mostly been adherents to the Epicurean or
_Pooh-Pooh_ theory, have in some instances limited the primary emotional
significance of an Aspirate H to the denoting of a desire or craving. It
may reasonably be asked, whether they have not identified a part with
the whole, and whether every awakening of intense feeling does not find
its natural expression in an aspirated vowel.
The manner in which the H is used by our best writers, shows they
appreciated its vigour and stress-giving properties. In Shakespeare, the
H is most frequent in salient passages and epigrams. It plays a
conspicuous part in the grand, deep anthem-eloquence of Dryden’s
full-toned lines; and in the verses of Byron and other strong writers
its powers are judiciously applied. A recognition of the honest vigour
of aspirated words is conspicuous in an aphæresis perpetrated for
histrionic purposes by Mr Henry Irving, who has informed the writer that
he sometimes drops the H in “humbleness—”
“as in Shylock’s speech to Antonio:[6]
‘Shall I bend low, and in a bondsman’s key,
With ’bated breath and whisp’ring (h)umbleness,
Say this....’
where the idea is much better expressed by the omission of the
Aspirate.”
There are persons to whom the simple act of aspirating, will never have
suggested the idea of difficulty; but there are many others (who in
their ordinary speech, put H before half the vowels that do not require
it) who are totally at a loss when asked to aspirate a given vowel. They
either aspirate unconsciously or not at all. If the reader has never
attempted to reform a persistent H-dropper, by teaching him the value
and nature of the Aspirate, he can form no adequate idea of the extreme
difficulty of the task. Some people can learn everything but H’s.
“_Speak as though you were breathing on glass_,” is a practical precept
often laid down for the benefit of young children; and is one deserving
of the consideration of many of their elders; for, as a matter of fact,
in pronouncing the words _hay_, _he_, _high_, _hoe_, before a mirror,
one will observe that four successive breath-marks are thrown on the
cold surface of the glass; whereas none will be seen if one drop the
H’s. In pronouncing the H of HŪ, the markings are scarcely discernable
or altogether absent; the breath-stream having become diverted and
attenuated by friction against the palate. In Aspirating _ha!_ the
breath-marks are very distinct; but still more so in the case of the
jerked terminal _h‘_ of a quick, contemptuous _bah‘!_
The above experiment is valuable as affording an insight into the
phonation of the modern English Aspirate, and as a means by which the
new convert from the H-dropping heresy may learn to avoid the opposite
error of excessive zeal in the production of his H’s. It is noticeable
that the early aspirative labours of a converted H-dropper give birth to
monstrosities. He pronounces _hand_, _heart_, &c., as though the vowels
were _preceded_ by the _ch_ of lo_ch_. This is a reversion to a former
type of H’s, but not the developed modern Aspirate. The physiological
difference in the formation of aspirated and non-aspirated vowel-sounds
appears to be, that, in aspirating, the oral passage is rendered more
cavernous, and a greater volume of breath is emitted. This may be partly
verified by uttering the Italian _ā_ before the mirror. When the same
vowel is aspirated (_ha_), the soft palate is seen to be slightly
raised, while the tongue is depressed and slightly retracted, thereby
causing an enlargement of the cavity through which the sound passes.
The H, in some positions, is not easily managed. In colloquial speech it
is frequently left out of little words that are of minor importance to
the sense. In a homely rendering of, “You saw how high (h)e held (h)is
head,” the occluded h’s would be nearly lost. Such a pronunciation,
though not one to be highly commended, finds its excuse in convenience,
and can claim some degree of extenuation in a very antique origin, and
of justification in extensive usage.
In the case of short, unaccented syllables of a metrical composition, as
in the following instance,
“But Marmion said that ever near,
A lady’s voice was in _h_is ear,
And that the priest _h_e could not _h_ear.”...
and in this couplet—
_H_e _h_eeds it not; ’mid eddied _h_eaving foam
_H_e _h_ears the echoes of _h_is island _h_ome,
difficulties are presented in the way of a regard for H’s and for metre.
Under all circumstances, to stop and stutter is inelegant, to repeat a
word for the sake of giving it its dropped H, has a ludicrous effect;
and to attempt by a powerful effort to aspirate some particular vowel,
will often result in a promiscuous scattering of H’s. The only advice to
the novice is: select difficult passages,[7] and practice them
repeatedly—speak slowly and carefully. One must endeavour to aspirate
with ease, letting the result be light, not forced, though distinct to
the ear. Each person should use discretion, and suit the degree of
aspiration to the power of his voice. The degree suitable to some
persons would require an effort on the part of others to imitate. The
great thing necessary is once thoroughly to understand the nature of the
process, and then to remember where to apply it. The performance will
gradually become a result of reflex action and be gone through correctly
but unconsciously.
H-dropping must be overcome, and the misuse of H avoided; the world is
intolerant of dissent from customs established; and orthoepy, or correct
pronunciation, is a cardinal virtue, although, in common with most other
of the “orthos,” it is endowed with chameleon-like faculties of change.
THE SILENT H.
It has been seen that the letter H is a signal to aspirate. The term
_mute_, _otiose_ or SILENT H, implies that the signal means nothing, is
useless, and is intended to be disregarded; that it is a false beacon,
an orthographical encumbrance, and a trap for the unwary. Lumber of this
sort is to be found in certain words, but in which ones, has always been
a profound mystery from the fact of it having been so often explained;
and information was unobtainable, by reason of a multiplicity of
informants. Where the H is silent, has been difficult to determine; why
the H is silent, cannot be determined at all. This much has long been
divulged; it is silent in _hour_, _honour_, _honest_, _heir_, and most
of their formatives; the rest is darkness—in the dictionaries. On no
point of English pronunciation have authorities more notoriously
disagreed than on that of words beginning with H; and if any one wishes
to see the fathers of English Orthoepy at loggerheads, or the Doctors of
Modern English Pronunciation in a muddle, let him glance at the H
section of their several dictionaries.
Be it, however, remembered that the work of the writer of pronouncing
dictionaries is one of extreme difficulty, and that his short-comings
are often of the most excusable kind to be met with in the whole field
of literature. The etymologist has scientific fact to deal with; the
lexicographer is by tacit consent, and in virtue of that fiction of
fictions “etymological conservation,” allowed, to some extent, to
jurisdict or appeal to precedent in matters of orthography; but the
professional orthoepist is expected to catch and register the passing
sound of a nation’s speech. There is no discretionary power attached to
his office; his duty is to discover who are representative speakers
among his contemporaries, and—by a sort of arithmetical process—to
determine what pronunciation is _prevalent_ among them. Hence his entire
task is one of appalling magnitude. But he has discovered a meretricious
means of lightening his labours, which consists in referring to his
predecessors in cases of extra uncertainty; the result frequently being
that he gives as modern an obsolete pronunciation. It is evident that
several words in which the silent H is concerned have undergone this
treatment.
In the very good old times, ere spelling-books had created “bad
spellers,” every writer was, in a small way, a phonographer; that is, he
wrote words as he heard them pronounced. The system did not favour
uniformity of spelling, but resulted in most words being written in two
or three different ways, some in fifteen, or even twenty. Instead of
animadverting on the subject of these discrepancies, or attributing them
to the undetermined value and inadequate supply of alphabetical symbols,
we may better serve our present purpose by simply noticing that it was
customary for early scribes to insert the letter H in some words wherein
it is now generally supposed to have been silent. We see at once that
the facts of the case militate against this modern belief in ancient
silent H’s. For, if the majority of these early penmen, whose minds were
neither in an appreciable degree biassed by precedent, nor haunted by
the forms of orthographical bogies, habitually inserted an H, it is
evident that the letter was intended to have a phonetic significance,
and had very probably a strong phonetic value. The same conclusions have
been arrived at by Mr Ellis, who sees no reason for believing that H was
not audible in _honor_, _honest_, and _hour_ in the time of Chaucer—say
1400. Collateral evidence in support of Mr Ellis’s views is to be found
in the fact of the doubtful words occurring in alliterative verses of an
early date; and of their occurring in such a manner as to allow of the
supposition of their H’s being implicated in the alliterations as, what
are termed by Professor Skeat, “rime-letters.”
In the age of Chaucer (and, in diminishing degrees, down to our own
day), it was customary to drop the H’s of short, unaccented syllables in
poetry, provided that these were not placed in a position immediately
succeeding a metrical pause. But, as far as the writer is aware, the
sixteenth century is the earliest that has furnished a record of any
words having been habitually written with H’s and pronounced without
them. Palsgrave, in 1530, gave _honest_, _honour_, _habundance_, and
_habitation_ as having each an otiose H. Salesbury (1547), in his Welsh
Dictionary, says that H is held silent in “French and Englysh, in such
wordes as be derived out of Latyne, as these: _honest_, _habitation_,
_humble_, _habit_, _honeste_, _honoure_, _exhibition_, and
_prohibition_;” whereas he aspirates it in _h_umour. Gill (1621) adds
_hour_ and _hyssop_ as having a mute H; and aspirates in _h_erb, _h_eir,
and _h_umbleness. Jones (1701) makes it mute in _swine-herd_, _Heber_,
_Hebrew_, _hecatomb_, _hedge_, _Hellen_, _herb_, _hermit_, and some
others. Smart (1836) reduced the whole list of words with a silent H to
_heir_, _honest_, _honour_, _hostler_, _hour_, _humble_, and _humour_;
and modern usage consents to a still greater reduction.
The suppression of H’s has been observed to have been chiefly exercised
in words coming to us from the Latin, through the French language. It
seems that Salesbury, quoted above, regarded this, or something like it,
as having been a rule. But we find records of some words of neither
French nor Latin origin having also had silent H’s assigned to them; and
we have the still more important fact that the Franco-latin words in
which the H is aspirated are greatly in excess of those in which it ever
was silent—the latter really constituting a very insignificant minority.
In the third line of _The Vision of William_,
In _h_abite as an _h_ermit un_h_oly of workës,
we have convincing proof that Langland (1332–1400?) had no regard for
the etymology of his Aspirates. Certainly, French words of Latin origin
have constantly taken the aspirate when their etymology was in the least
obscure. Thus, _hearse_ (which most people do not know is French, and
still less do they think it represents the Latin [acc.], _hirpicem_[8])
has always retained its Aspirate. Moreover, it were one thing to be able
to prove that a certain pronunciation would be etymologically correct,
and another to show that the pronunciation of a language is corrected by
etymology. We are, in fact, at liberty to regard the English silent H,
as being practically devoid of active etymological sponsors.
Taken collectively, these different data very strongly suggest the idea
of silent H’s having been, if not born of, at least very assiduously
fostered, and promoted with almost paternal solicitude, by the judgment
or fancy of theoretically-inclined orthoepists. If, on the other hand,
the early orthoepists were really honest in their pretensions to
chronicle the actual pronunciation of their day, the result of their
endeavours still remains open to the objection of inaccuracy, by reason
of the special difficulty they will have experienced in recognizing a
standard to go by. Nothing can, now-a-days, screen them from a suspicion
of having exercised their powers of imagination equally with those of
observation; nor can their partial disagreements exonerate them from the
charge of a traditionary collusion in cases of extra perplexity. If
asked, with what weight this same charge might be brought to bear on our
more recent compilers of “modern pronouncing dictionaries,” the writer
of the present treatise would, under the plea of _coram non judice_,
take refuge from the onus of pronouncing an invidious decision. But if
asked why the comparatively modern dictionaries quoted on the opposite
sheet, are, in some instances, so flagrantly at variance with the best
modern usage with regard to pronunciation, he would unhesitatingly reply
that they are so chiefly out of deference to the opinions of the
gentleman who wrote the first complete pronouncing dictionary and lived
over a hundred years ago.
DICTIONARY CONCORDANCES.
“H” prescribes the Aspirate; “v” indicates that the vowel is not to be
aspirated. The pronunciation recommended in this work is shown in the
first column.
┌──────────────╥────╥────┬────╥────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐
│ ║ ║Wk. │ J. ║ O. │ N. │Wor.│ S. │ R. │ C. │ D. │ B. │
├──────────────╫────╫────┼────╫────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤
│=HEIR= ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│=HOUR= ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│=HONEST= ║ v ║ v │ v ║ v │ v │ v │ v │ v │ v │ v │ v │
│=HONOR= ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│and all their ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│formatives ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ _except_ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│honorarium ║ v ║ │ ║ v │ │ │ H │ │ H │ v │ │
│_and_ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│honorary ║ v ║ v │ ║ v │ │ v │ v │ v │H or│ v │ │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ v │ │ │
│HERB ║ H ║ v │ v ║ v │ v │ v │ H │ v │ H │H or│ H │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ v │ │
│herbaceous ║ H ║ H │ v ║ v │ H │ v │ H │ H │ H │ H │ │
│herbage ║ H ║ v │ ║ v │H or│H or│ H │ H │ H │H or│ │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ v │ v │ │ │ │ v │ │
│herbal ║ H ║ H │ ║ v │ H │ H │ │ H │ H │ H │ │
│herbalist ║ H ║ H │ ║ v │ │ │ │ H │ H │ H │ │
│herbivorous ║ H ║ │ ║ v │ │ │ │ H │ H │ H │ │
│herborisation ║ H ║ │ ║ v │ │ │ H │ H │ H │ H │ │
│HOSPITAL ║ H ║ v │ ║ H │ H │ H │ H │ H │ H │H or│ H │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ v │ │
│hospitalier ║ H ║ │ ║ H │ │ │ │ H │ H │ H │ │
│hospitable ║ H ║ H │ ║ H │ │ H │ H │ H │ H │ H │ │
│HOSPICE ║ H ║ │ ║ H │ │ │ H │ │H or│ H │ │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ v │ │ │
│HOTEL ║ H ║ │ ║ H │ H │ │ H │ H │ H │ H │ H │
│HOSTEL ║ H ║ H │ ║ H │ H │ H │ │ H │ H │ H │ │
│hostelry ║ H ║ H │ ║ H │ H │ H │ │ │ H │ H │ │
│Hostler ║ ║ v │ v ║ v │ v │ v │ v │ H │H or│H or│ v │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ v │ v │ │
│(_ostler_) ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│hosteler ║ H ║ │ ║ │ │ H │ │ │ │ │ │
│HUMOR ║ H {Smart proposed that this word, meaning moisture, │
│ ║ fluids, &c. should be aspirated. │
│humoral ║ H ║ v │ ║ H │ v │H or│ H │ H │ v │ v │ │
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ │ v │ │ │ │ │ │
│HUMOUR ║H or║ v │ v ║ H │ │H or│ v │ H │H or│ v │ v │
│ ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ v │ │ │ v │ │ │
│humourism ║H or║ │ ║ H │ v │H or│ │ │ │ │ │
│ ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ v │ │ │ │ │ │
│Humourist ║H or║ v │ ║ H │ │ v │ v │ H │H or│ v │ │
│ ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ v │ │ │
│humourous ║H or║ v │ ║ H │ │ v │ v │ H │ │ v │ │
│ ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│humoursome ║H or║ v │ ║ H │ │ v │ v │ H │ │ │ │
│ ║ v ║ │ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│HUMBLE ║ H ║ v │ v ║ v │H or│H or│ H │ H │H or│H or│H or│
│ ║ ║ │ ║ │ v │ v │ │ │ v │ v │ v │
│HUMILITY ║ H ║ H │ ║ v │ │ │ │ H │ │ H │ │
└──────────────╨────╨────┴────╨────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘
A blank generally indicates that no distinct opinion is expressed in the
work consulted.
KEY TO REFERENCES.
Wk.— Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. By John Walker. Glasgow:
Blackie & Son. 1847.
J.— Dictionary of the English Language. By Samuel Johnson. 4th
Edition. 1786.
O.— Comprehensive English Dictionary. By John Ogilvie, LL.D. London:
Blackie & Son. 1874.
N.— Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. By P. Austin
Nuttall, LL.D. London: Geo. Routledge & Sons. 1873.
Wor.— Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. By Joseph E. Worcester. London:
Geo. Routledge & Sons. 1875.
S.— Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary. By Rev. Jas. Stormonth.
London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons. 1879.
R.— Webster’s Improved Pronouncing Dictionary. By Chas. Robson.
London: Ward, Lock & Tyler. _No date_—recent.
C.— Dictionary of the English Language. By Arnold J. Cooley. London
and Edbro’: W. & R. Chambers. _No date_—recent edition.
D.— Chambers’ Etymological Dictionary. By Jas. Donald, F.R.G.S.
1878.
B.— Bell’s Standard Elocutionist. London: Wm. Mullan & Son. 1879.
If it be granted that of yore, orthoepists based their decisions with
regard to the silent H on no other authority than that of their own
assertions, or on dogmatic, or even spurious etymology, it flows as a
corollary that these ancient law-givers can claim no allegiance from
modern speakers. And again, if modern compilers of “pronouncing
dictionaries,” being the direct descendants of the ancient orthoepists,
assume the right of hereditary legislation, and persist in their
attempts to govern our modern pronunciation by the worthless traditions
of their predecessors, the yoke of their archaical jurisdiction must be
thrown off altogether. We may therefore approach the question of “What
words now have silent H’s?” entirely free from the bias of traditionary
lore, and from the pressure of antiquarian and etymological
considerations.
When preparing to obtain a firm basis upon which to found and sustain a
plea for the recognition of a standard pronunciation founded on
contemporary usage, the writer solicited the advice of Professor Bain,
whose friendly assistance was partly conveyed in the following:—
“Where usage conflicts, we must first decide who are to be received as
authorities. It seems to me that the stage is better than any other, and
the habits of great actors might be referred to. The cultivated society
of the metropolis ought to furnish a guide, but we can hardly fix upon a
person representing them.”
Acting according to the spirit of this advice, the writer has consulted
the USAGE OF CULTIVATED SOCIETY as represented by a number of gentlemen
whose various qualifications eminently fit them to fulfil the conditions
laid down by Dr Bain.[9] The result of the inquiry, and of personal and
attentive observation, furnishes the following rules:—
Rule I. =H is silent in Heir, Honest, Honor, Hour, and in their
formatives, inclusive of honorarium= (15) =and honorary= (18).
The figures represent the number of persons (among those consulted)
who adhere to the particulars of these rules.
Rule II. =In Humour and its formatives= (be they verbs, substantives, or
adjectives) =the H may be either silent= (10), =or not= (9).
=In Humor= (meaning fluid, moisture, &c.) =and its formatives, the H is
sounded=.
Rule III. =H is Aspirated in all other words in which it occurs.= These
include the following and all their formatives—Herb (17); Hotel (16);
Hospital (17); Humble (18); Humility (19), &c., &c.
NOTES. It is difficult to find a reason why an exception should be
made in favour of _honorarium_ and _honorary_; and, unless the H of
these words can offer a better plea for entering into the
pronunciation than can the H’s of the other formatives of Honor, we
may—after the style of Lucian in his trial of the letter T—move for
its expulsion. The rejection of an anomaly is a valuable improvement
of which judgment approves, and which a love of regularity will
vindicate and maintain. Uniformity presents so many advantages, that
small concessions of opinion will be willingly made in order to secure
it.
With regard to _Hostler_, there is a balance of opinion—(8) being in
favour of the Aspirate, and (11) against it. The pronunciation of the
word should be made depend on the spelling.
In 1775, Perry waged war with Kendrick concerning the H of _Humour_,
and threw down the gauntlet in favour of a y-sound. Subsequently,
Enfield entered the lists on the side of Kendrick; while Walker,
Sheridan, and a host of others, ranged themselves on the side of
Perry; and Smart at length proposed that the respective claims of H
and Y should become matters for the optional decision of a perplexed
public. Hence the phonetic rendering of the word in most modern
dictionaries is indifferently “yū’mur” or “hū’mur.” Webster’s verdict
was curt and concise: “The pronunciation “yumur” is odiously vulgar!”
His words lose their edge in our day, for the “odious” practice
prevails with a great number of good speakers. The present writer, if
permitted to advance an opinion, would say that to his mind to drop
the H “is a custom more honour’d in the breach than the observance;”
and that they secede in very good company who aspirate.
The H of _Humble_ has of recent years been reinstated in public favour
by the late Mr Charles Dickens, whose “Uriah Heep” remains a warning
to evil-doers and h-droppers. It would be a boon to all speakers of
English if a series of “Uriahs” could contrive to eliminate every
otiose H from the language.
H’s that occur in the body of words, as in fore_h_ead, ex_h_ibit, &c.,
are weaker than initial H’s; but a regard for them marks a refined
speaker. The h of “exhibition” may be considered lost, so also the h in
the “ham” of names—_e.g._, Bucking(h)am, Bal(h)am, &c. Long words,
especially of a classic origin, often pay dearly for suddenly acquired
popularity; and when any extraordinary event with which they are
nominally connected puts them accidentally into the mouths of the
people, they generally, in becoming household words, are clipped of much
of their early dignity.
In parenthesis, a word about the indefinite article. One very excellent
grammar says:—
Many of the best writers, as Macaulay, use _an_ before H (not silent)
when the accent is on the second syllable: “_an_ historical parallel.”
Some words beginning with a vowel are pronounced as if they began with
a consonantal _y_: ewe, eunuch, eulogy, European, useful, &c. Before
such words some writers use _an_.[10]
A journalistic acquaintance lately informed the writer that the use of
_an_ before _u_ (when = _y_) is a feature of English journalism, the
Scotch being more addicted to _a_. The former method is more correct to
the eye; the latter to the ear: uniformity favours the former. The
employment of _an_ before H-out-of-accent (_e.g._, hypothesis,
harmonium, hiatus, horizon) is a nicety, and arises from a fastidious
application of the law of Euphonic Adaptation.
Reverting for the last time to the history of the silent H, it is almost
necessary to mention that an ingenious American writer (to whom we have
already referred) was recently engaged disseminating opinions at
variance with those adduced in this work. In a cleverly-written article,
he says:—
I venture the conjecture, which, however, is somewhat more than a
conjecture, that the suppression of H was once very widely diffused
throughout England among all speakers, including the best, during
which time—a very long one—the function of H was to throw a stress on
the syllable which it ushered in, as it is in the Spanish word
_hijos_.
He further suggests that vulgar h-dropping of to-day may be a survival
of a former accepted method of pronunciation. _Se non è vero, è ben
trovato_, and this recognition of the emphasizing power of H is highly
commendable. But it cannot be conceded that the old English H was
normally passive, and only roused into phonic activity on occasions of
emphatic emergency; nor can it be allowed that the Spanish comparison is
a felicitous one, it being rather that which an opponent might have
adduced could he have deemed it to have had any bearing whatever on the
point in question. This writer ought to have borne in mind that the _h_
of _hijos_ happens to be mute, whereas the _j_ is an Aspirate. There is
nevertheless much valuable matter in his article. It is moreover of
service as an example of error; its author having fallen into a
conclusion that lies open to those who allow their attention and
judgment to become absorbed in the frolics of H’s in some of the old
MSS. He points out, for instance, that in the “Lay of Havelok the Dane”
(1280), the words _eye_, _earl_, _ever_, &c., have H’s; and he assumes
the spelling to have represented an allowable pronunciation, neglecting,
however, to take into consideration that this Lay is among the worst of
examples, from the fact of its being essentially a provincial production
(Sir F. Madden believes it to have hailed from Lincolnshire), and one in
which meaningless H’s are uncommonly prevalent and letters are curiously
placed. Although ancient writers habitually endeavoured to write a word
as they spoke it, they did not resist the temptation of occasionally
adding an idle letter, or of employing one as an orthographical
expedient. In modern German, H is made to serve in the latter capacity;
its duty being to lengthen the vowel that precedes it; _e.g._, in the
word _Bo_h_n_, “give it an understanding but no tongue.” The H prefixed
to “eye” in Havelok, if not simply a scrivener’s blunder, may be a
result of metathesis or of commutation, or of the two acting
simultaneously—Ormin (_circa_ 1210) wrote the word “eȝhe.” But, to
refrain from speculative meanderings, one may refer to Mr Ellis, who
mentions that in _Havelok_ H is unnecessarily prefixed in holde (line
30), hete (146), het (653), hof (1976), &c., &c., and with no sort of
uniformity; and, in giving the intended pronunciation, he affirms these
H’s to be meaningless as signs of aspiration.
The most that, with a due regard for fact and authority, can be conceded
to the writer of the magazine article above referred to, is that H,
being formerly a harsh sound, was not unfrequently omitted for the sake
of fluency in the same manner as whole syllables are occasionally lopped
off by careless speakers. This concession, by-the-bye, is not specified
in his treatise.
DIGRAPHS.
When two vowels are blended, the result is a diphthong; when two other
letters unite, the result is usually called a DIGRAPH.
H may give trouble to some persons when speaking their mother tongue; as
to the Briton, who should, and to the Frenchman, who must not aspirate;
but the digraphs of H are universally admitted to be among the most
serious difficulties that beset a man who is trying to acquire the
pronunciation of a language not his own. The German _ich_ is liable to
dwindle into “ik” in the mouth of an Englishman, and into “ish” in that
of a Frenchman; with Italians and some others it is unutterable. The
modern Greek delta, and more especially χθ, often undergo cacophonic
metamorphoses when entrusted to the care of well-meaning philhellenists;
a digraph of H enters into the phonetic composition of most of the
shibboleths of Eastern tongues; and, in the estimation of many
foreigners, the bugbear of our English pronunciation is spelt TH. In
Britain, the _ch_ of lo_ch_ and Au_ch_termu_ch_ty remains the Caledonian
pass-word.
The following are the more common digraphs of H:—
=CH=, =GH=, =PH=, =SH=, =TH=,
=BH=, =DH=, =KH=, =LH=, =NH=, =RH=, =ZH=,
=WH=.
The first five are perfect digraphs, a phonic union of parts is
effected, and a new sound produced; thus, neither “hat,” with the sound
of c before it, nor “cat,” with its vowel aspirated, will give the sound
heard in “_ch_at” ∴ C + H is not = CH.
=CH= has three sounds:—_k_, (_ch_aos); _sh_, (ben_ch_); and a third,
compound, tsh (_ch_ur_ch_).
=GH= is a digraph to perpetuate the memory of English orthographical
anomalies.[11] It is used in writing seventy-five words, and in
sixty-three of them its presence is ignored entirely; in nine it is
equivalent to _ff_, and in three it represents a _g_. It signifies
nothing in “hi_gh_,” “Hu_gh_,” &c.; and in “flight,” “night,” &c., it
retains the same signification. In Old Saxon, and in Anglo-Saxon, “high”
was written _hea_, _heag_, _hig_, _heah_, _heh_, _hih_, &c. A spirit of
impartial justice instigated later writers to take in both the _g_ and
the _h_. Professor Meiklejohn (St. Andrews) mentions the opinion held by
some, that the Normans would not pronounce gutturals, and disregarded
the Saxon terminal _h_’s, wherefore the scribes attempted coercion by
strengthening their Aspirates with a _g_. The result must have been a
failure, since both the _h_’s and their g-prefixes became lost to the
pronunciation of most words. The English words in which GH is an initial
digraph are _ghastly_, _ghost_, and _gherkin_; in the two former the H
is altogether adventitious. There exists a proneness to transpose the
_h_ and the _t_ of height, (Saxon, _heath_, _hihth_, &c.), in
consequence of which, and with a superfluous _d_, it becomes “heidth.”
This mispronunciation is recorded by Jones as early as 1701. The
practice will arise from a natural tendency of the mind to bring into
conformity the sounds of words that are associated in their
meanings—leng_th_, dep_th_, bread_th_, wid_th_ _ergo_: “heidth”!
=PH= has the sound of _f_ (s_ph_ere). In Ste_ph_en and ne_ph_ew it
stands for _v_.
=SH= is the French _j_ (_j_oli), unvocalised. The Anglo-Saxons had not
this digraph, but it appeared some centuries after the conquest, which
suggests the possibility of its having been introduced by Norman
influences. Some curious philologist may perhaps undertake to
substantiate or demolish the theory that the Anglo-Saxons learnt to
pronounce SH by attempting to utter the French _j_. Certain it is that
the words _Je me jette à genoux_ would become changed into “Sheh me
shett ah sheenoo” by the average German of to-day. The substitution of
SH for _ss_ in the word _assume_ produces an odd-sounding archaism, yet
one that is occasionally met with in otherwise good speakers. According
to Jones, “a_sh_ume” was correct speech in the seventeenth century.
=TH= of _thin_ and =TH= of _then_ are elementary sounds represented
now-a-days by two letters each. The former is produced by passing
unvocalized breath through a narrow aperture left between the fore-part
of the tongue and the edge of the upper teeth (the central incisors);
the second by the same position of the speech-organs, but with breath
that is vocalized.[12] Common errors are, to confound the TH of _bath_,
_path_, _wreath_, &c., with that of _bathe_, _paths_, _wreathe_, &c. The
former are unvocalized, as in _thin_.
Of the digraphs of the second row little need be said. With one
exception they are rarely used. =BH=, =DH=, =KH=, and =ZH= are English
renderings of the aspirated consonants of Asiatic languages. =LH= is a
legacy from the Anglo-Saxon. =NH= is Portuguese. In =RH= the H is
excessively useless; it is disregarded, and the R remains unchanged.
That man deserved to have his name recorded who first invented the _h_
of “rhyme.” He will have traced a technical connection between _rime_
and “rhythm;” and will have followed the latter to its Greek source
(ῥυθμος). His next act, the insertion of _rime’s_ apparently lost _h_,
will have seemed to him one only of mere reparative justice. His
excellent motives and his perspicacity might have met the admiration of
posterity, had not his etymology been so egregiously faulty, and the
word _rime_, a direct descendant of the Saxon _rim_, and as independent
of a Greek as of a Cherokee origin. But the _h_ he inserted is there
still, and cannot be cast off by any daring iconoclast without an outcry
being raised in its behalf by alarmed traditionists: for our
orthographical creed is derived from our forefathers, impressed with the
accumulated evidences of their quaint blunders, their venerable
ignorance, and admirable errors of judgment, all to be assiduously
copied by each of us their descendants, as an alternative to being
scouted for bad spellers. Thus it is that things originating in a
weakness or perverse use of the reasoning faculties of an ancestor, may
grow to be regarded as a virtue in a descendant.
WH.
Our attention may now advert to the perfect digraph =WH=.
Alexander Gill, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and Head Master of St
Paul’s Schools, wrote, “_W, aspiratum, consona est, quam scribunt per_
wh, _et tamen aspiratio præcedit_.” (W, aspirated, is a consonant which
is written _wh_, and yet the Aspirate precedes it.) Dr Lowth
(1710–1787), Bishop of London, is quoted by Mr Walker as having directed
that WH should be pronounced “HW,” this having been the relative
positions of the letters during the Anglo-Saxon period. The erudite
theory of the great Hebrew and Saxon scholar had a fascination for the
theoretical orthoepist of whom Mr Cull, F.S.A., the learned editor of
Ogilvie’s Dictionary, writes:—
Mr Walker did not profess to record the current pronunciation of his
day, but he sought to establish principles and even rules to govern
the pronunciation; and would change the pronunciation of words to
bring them within his rules.
It is probable that Dr Lowth, who, practically, is the responsible
author of this theory of inversion, was led to his conclusions as much
by his belief that W was a vowel as by the historical considerations
alluded to above. As regards W being always a vowel, Dr Lowth’s argument
was successfully refuted by Walker himself, whose statements in this
respect, Posterity has endorsed. W is a vowel only when forming the
latter half of a diphthong. And, moreover, even if the W were a vowel,
Dr Lowth could have shewn no good reason for inverting the order of
letters in pronouncing the digraph WH. The retrospective influence of a
post-aspirate has no power to produce a breathing _on_ a vowel, or _on_
a consonant; but generally to cause a vowel to _terminate_ in a jerked
breath (_h‘_) or a consonant to become unvocalised. And again; that
Anglo-Saxon writers had been wont to twist H round to the fore, was an
irrelevant fact, and one that ought to have had no weight with the
worthy bishop or with Mr John Walker when engaged in dictating laws of
pronunciation to the English lieges of King George III. When Walker
wrote the following sentence concerning Dr Johnson, he was in truth
constructing a formula for his own epitaph:—
His Dictionary has been deemed lawful plunder for every subsequent
lexicographer; and so servilely has he been copied, that his mistakes
re-appear in several other dictionaries.
And so it is that Mr Walker’s second-hand rule with regard to WH has
retained the implicit allegiance of all his successors who have had
pronouncing dictionaries to compile. In the presence of such massive
authority, to speak is to be silenced, and to differ is to be crushed.
But still, as is seen in many things, the most imposing and august array
of venerable doctrine cannot always stifle the “still small voice” of a
contrary conviction. Who shall say that Dr Primrose had not been looking
over a collection of pronouncing dictionaries, when he remarked that, as
ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of
myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to the untrue.
A purpose of this treatise is to respectfully solicit of modern
authorities a reconsideration of the doctrine of transposition or dictum
relative to the WH; and at the same time to lay certain data before the
general reader.
Clear notions concerning the ordinary W are necessary to a proper
appreciation of that variety occurring in WH.
The =vowel-W= is simply _oo_; thus, in _pew_, “_ew_” is a diphthong
and equal in sound to _ēoo_.
The =consonant-W= is a buzzed _oo_ plus a rapid transition into the
sound that succeeds it. Let [Illustration: buzzed oo] represent the
buzzed _oo_, and ❨ the rapid transition:
W = ([Illustration: buzzed oo]❨).
If, while pronouncing _oo_, we narrow the labial aperture by
approximating the edges of the upper and lower lips, the sound
[Illustration: buzzed oo] is produced. If, while producing the sound
[Illustration: buzzed oo], we enlarge the labial aperture with sudden
rapidity (❨), a perfect consonant-W results. Thus:
“we” = [Illustration: buzzed oo]❨ē; and, “woo” = [Illustration: buzzed
oo]❨oo.
Let WH be represented by ʍ. The difference between W and ʍ is that W is
produced by vocalised breath and certain lip-movements as described
above; whereas ʍ is produced by the _same lip-movements, but with
unvocalised breath_. Hence, in lieu of the buzzing sound, we find in ʍ a
whispered or “whistled breath.” It is this breath-sound of ʍ which has
been so persistently mistaken for the Aspirate H. The sole office of the
H in this digraph is to prescribe the unvocalization of the W. The
nature of the subject renders it difficult to parade proofs of these
facts on the pages of a book, in order to convince persons who, having a
veneration for Mr Walker’s hoo hoo theory, might wish to uphold in
theory that which they probably depart from in practice. By careful
attention to most thoroughly good speakers it will be noticed that an
unvocalised W (ʍ) is the phonic rendering of the digraph WH; although
the “whistled breath” may be mistaken for an Aspirate by a careless
observer, or by one resolute in error.
It is not easy to understand why these facts are not more widely
recognised and insisted upon by modern orthoepists and writers on
phonological science; and it is very difficult to attribute a cause to
the longevity of the erroneous notions that Mr Walker was an early means
of disseminating. When we see in our pronouncing dictionaries that
_whip_ is to be pronounced “hwip,” the only belief open to us is that
their writers intend two vowel-sounds to be heard in a word containing
only one vowel; for they can scarcely mean that the h shall aspirate a
consonantal _w_, nor that a jerked _h‘_ shall precede the word (thus
_h‘_ + _wip_), nor can they desire that the h shall aspirate a
whistle—Hʍip. To say the least, the rendering of any of these would
require a vocal gymnast to make it effective. But if two vowels _are_ to
be employed, the first must needs be aspirated and the second not; so
that a phonetic spelling of _whip_ and _why_ would be “hoo ip” and “hoo
i”! And, according to Mr Walker and his disciples, this is the correct
pronunciation. But the fact remains that even those gentlemen, who in
their dictionaries have scrupulously reproduced Mr Walker’s rule, have
seldom been known to violate the principles of a correct pronunciation
by adhering to it when speaking. The sore straits to which the rule
occasionally reduces them might elicit pity. “Hw” is found to be
unmanageable before _o_; and therefore we find that since the days of Mr
Walker, a perfect unanimity has prevailed among orthoepists with regard
to the extrusion of W from the pronunciation of every word in which the
digraph WH precedes an o; whence it comes that in all dictionaries in
common use, _whole_, _whom_, _who_, &c., are phonetically expressed
“hole,” “hoom,” “hoo,” &c.; for, according to their method, to retain
the W were to give these words the sound of hoo ole, hoo oom, and hoo
oo! If, on the other hand, one remembers that WH is an unvocalized W, no
more hesitation will be experienced in giving it its due before an _o_
than before any other vowel. ʍole, ʍoom, and ʍoo, are quite as easy to
pronounce as ʍist ʍip, or ʍale. _Who_ is, however, very frequently made
an exception by the best speakers of English, and pronounced “_hoo_.”
The word lost its ʍ in the seventeenth century, and does not seem in a
fair way to recover it.
Mr Ellis, so far as the writer is aware, is the only authority who has
entered a protest against the modern conception of WH; and he gives it
as his opinion that, from the earliest times, WH—whether mistaken for Hw
or Hoo—has always been and still is, if rightly pronounced, WH.
This digraph is peculiar to the English language. English-speaking
people differ in their manner of using it. In the south of England, it
is seldom more than W; and _which_ and _what_ are pronounced “wich” and
“wot.” The educated classes must, by courtesy, be supposed without the
pale of this accusation. In the northern parts of England WH is
decidedly more correctly used; in Scotland the pronunciation of it is
perfect. In few cases would it be other than absurd to seek, out of
England, for a criterion of English pronunciation; but this is one of
the exceptions wherein the norm is best found north of the Tweed. Scotch
H’s are harsh and grating, or like the H of HU (see page 37), or akin to
the results of those guttural spasms that attend the primiparous
aspirate-labours of a reformed H-dropper; and the Scotch are known to
wrongfully accuse Englishmen of dropping H’s, that in reality have been
properly aspirated; but the Scotch neither exaggerate nor neglect the
proper rendering of WH, and even their farm-labourers are worthy to be
taken as models.[13] _Whale_, _whelp_, _when_, _where_, _whole_, are, in
Scotland, distinctly and properly, ʍale, ʍelp, ʍen, ʍere, and ʍole.
Notwithstanding this indisputable fact, the four varieties of Ogilvie’s
excellent dictionary (the northern Scotchman’s lexical fetish) give
“hwale,” “hwen,” &c., as being the received pronunciation. In so doing
they agree with all contemporary productions of their kind. The
_rationale_ of the inversion is a mystery; but a clue to the cause of
this and other errors-upon-precedent, would very probably be found to
have Mr John Walker at one end of it and the conservative spirit of
subsequent orthoepists at the other.
PERMUTATION.
The principles of reciprocal interchange of sounds, which are actively
at work whenever new languages are coming into being, or old ones are
splitting, or falling into decay, can only be adequately apprehended by
obtaining a general but clear view of the entire scheme of philology.
The annals of H would, however, be glaringly in default if no mention
were made of its relations to foreign letters.
PHILOLOGY is a modern science. Leibnitz rescued it from the domain of
pure fancy; Sir William Jones supplied it with ground to work upon; Bopp
(a great authority on ancient Aspirates), Pott, and a host of others,
began to build. The Greeks had been impressed with the idea that their
language came from their gods; this made the study of alien tongues
appear unimportant; hence, Greek philological research ended where it
began. Analogous convictions shut the gates of progress on the most
civilized of the Shemitic races. The Romans, again, when seeking to
discover the origin of tongues, looked eastward for inspiration; but
they did not look far enough. Long generations of their successors
burrowed, like moles, in the Plains of Shinar. Grimm came, and there was
light. The name of this great German philosopher has become so
inseparably associated with the sudden strides made by modern linguistic
science, as to have raised him from the ranks of philological pioneers,
and placed him—in popular estimation—at the head and front of the whole
enterprise. Whatever be the exact degree of his merit as a discoverer or
thinker, as a successful propagator of rational views he stands a
colossus and a marvel. Labeled fragile by the sceptic, and dangerous by
the orthodox, his theories out-lived both grimaces and frowns, and
within a few years of their birth aroused Europe to the fact that a
“Babel” had been, and still was, both within and around her; and,
seemingly by miracle, they even succeeded in carrying conviction and
recognition of a truth that confuted tradition, to the very centres of
some of the ecclesiastical circles of the day. Grimm’s discoveries,
while pointing out the slow but constant changes that languages undergo,
showed also that all the languages of Europe and half those of Asia had
sprung from a common origin—and that, not the Hebrew one dogmatically
assigned to them by the Early Fathers. Fortunately for Grimm, he
published in the beginning of the nineteenth century; had he been a
contemporary of poor Galileo he might have been subjected to some
inconvenience and censure.
Grimm—who, by-the-bye, was a bigoted patriot—devoted himself chiefly to
an investigation of the Teutonic tongues, and to a study of the German
language; but the result of his labours has shown the changes that
sounds undergo when a word is being distributed among different peoples.
The LAW bearing his name is tabulated below:—
───────────────────────┬───────────────────────┬───────────────────────
Old Indo-European and │ Introduced into Low │
Classic. │ German tongues │ In High German.
│ (English, &c.) │
───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────
Aspirate sounds │become soft │ hard
Soft „ │ „ hard │ Aspirate
Hard „ │ „ Aspirate │ soft
───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴───────────────────────
These rules are not without exceptions, but, especially in the case of
sounds that begin words, the exceptions are not numerous enough to
nullify the rule.
The following are some examples of permutation affecting the H:—
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin hard sounds become Aspirate sounds in
English; example:—
_Sanskrit_, hrid (= _krid_)
_Greek_, kardia } = _English_ _H_eart.
_Latin_, cor-dis
The true English Aspirate corresponds to the Sanskrit K, and has
nothing to do with the old Aryan _H_. The Latin H in _habere_ has no
Aryan root, and remains unexplained. English _have_ is related to the
Latin _capere_, not _habere_.
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin Aspirates, represented by g:—
_Sanskrit_, Hansa _English_, goose.
_Greek_, chen { = _German_, gans.
_Latin_, (h)anser _Russian_, gus.
_Breton_, gwaz.
Some of the other changes that H undergoes in Indo-European languages
may be briefly summarized:—
H = _ch_, example: Lat. _humus_, Gr. _chama_.
H = _chth_ „ „ _hes_, _heri_, „ _chthes_.
H = _s_ „ „ _septum_, „ _hepta_.
H = _w_ „ „ many Greek words discarded the digamma for the
Aspirate.
That H = _f_, has been shown in a Sabine and a Spanish example (page
24), and the same may be seen in a few French words—_e.g._, Lat.
f_oris_, Fr. h_ors_; and Lat. f_abulari_, Fr. h_abler_. But the
descendants of the Gauls are not chargeable with having reduced this
last word to its present stunted condition; the mutilation of
_fabulari_ was another act of vandalism perpetrated at an early date
in Spain, the word having (according to Brachet[14]) crossed the
Pyrenees, disguised as “_hablar_” in the sixteenth century.
Disguises still more extraordinary happen in the Gothic languages. H
is exchangeable with _c_. This substitution, together with the
subsequent disappearance of the H, are causes of confusion, and often
effectually conceal the relationship of cognate words. At first sight
the English word _raw_ seems to be considerably less than kin to the
Italian _crudo_; but on collating the several synonymous
words—English, _raw_; (Dutch, _raauw_); Saxon, _hreaw_; Latin, _cruor_
and _crudus_; (French, _cru_), and Italian _crudo_; their family
likeness and community of origin become a little more discernible.
The things of the Present are born of the Past, and are moulding the
things of the Future; the deeds of to-day show events of to-morrow
reflected in shadowy outline. Conjectures concerning the future of H may
be built on data afforded by its history. The Aspirate has grown
enfeebled in Low German tongues, and in Latin ones is almost discarded.
It would bode evil to the continued existence of H, if either of these
classes were to furnish the “universal language.” But, probably one of
them will. The _strong breathing_ seems to be a remnant of that stage of
transition which, at one time, may have formed a link between
gesticulatory speech and the language of articulate sound. Then it was
that every available accessory to the expression of the emotions will
have been brought into use. And, _per contra_, in a highly developed
state of civilization, with its accompanying highly developed
speech-code, the tones and modes of expression that constituted nature’s
primitive eloquence must fall gradually into disuse. The strong
breathing and the guttural breathing, having been the most expressive
emotional interpreters of the early savage, are repugnant to the
artificial sedateness and studied reserve of the modern speaker. In the
speech of the well-bred Englishman, the hale old English H has melted
into a soft Aspirate, and even this is likely to be soon altogether
lost. The French say, “We regard aspirated H’s with horror!”—Littré[15]
declares they hurt his chest. Whatever be the language spoken by
Macaulay’s New Zealander, it is highly probable that he will drop his
H’s.
Another omen unfavourable to H is this. Any letter doomed to die out of
a word or a language, generally attempts to depart gracefully by first
acquiring the nature of an aspirate-consonant, and then turns into a
perfect H; under this form it relies upon h-dropping mortals to give it
quiet burial, and unobtrusively confide it to Oblivion.
APPENDIX.
[To the kindness of Professor Skeat of Cambridge I am indebted for the
following compend, wherein the scientific grounds upon which a
theoretical rule for the silent H might be constructed, are
perspicuously exposed, while a practical view of the case is also
taken. A list of words with doubtful H’s was submitted to Professor
Skeat, and the comments of this foremost of British etymologists are a
reply to the question: What reasons can be found for the silencing of
the H’s?]
Of course the etymology has much to do with it, so has accent, so has
rapidity of speech, so have individual notions.
(1.) ETYMOLOGY.
There are four principal H’s—English, French, Latin, and Greek.
As a _rule_, pronounce all but the French; and, of these, all but some
words of Latin origin.
Examples. _English_—HILL, HOG, (though this is properly Welsh), HUNT.
The _h_ should _never_ be omitted, being an original aspirate of great
strength.
_French_—herb, hospital, hostler, &c. By rule, the _h_ should be silent;
but the word _herb_, in particular, has become so completely Anglicised
that to hear an _h_ in it is common. So also _habit_, _haughty_,
_hearse_, _human_; _habit_ and _human_ being counted as Latin.
The H was sometimes omitted in the fourteenth century.
“As wrtis [wortis] of _erbis_ soone thei shul falle doun.” Wycliffite
version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (earlier version).
“Thei schulen falle doun soone as the wortis of _eerbis_.” Wycliffite
version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (later version).
But French words from Frankish, not Latin sources, take _h_, as
_hamlet_, _halbert_, _harass_, _hatchet_; together with proper names, as
_Henry_, _Hubert_. So also _harness_, a French word, but not of Latin
origin.
_Latin_—The _h_ is commonly sounded, as _horrid_. But _honorary_ and
_honorarium_ follow the French word _honour_, and commonly omit _h_.
_Greek_—The _h_ is important, as in _history_, _hexagon_, and should be
sounded.
(2.) ACCENT.
Accent often drowns the _h_. Thus _history_ takes _h_, but _historical_
is usually _istorical_. To find this out, do not go by what people _say_
they say (which is one thing), but by what you hear them say, which is a
_very different matter_. Compare _hebdomadal_, _hallucination_,
_hereditary_, _hiatus_, _histrionical_, _hippopotamus_, _hexameter_,
_hieroglyphic_, _histology_, _horizon_, _hidalgo_, _homœopathy_,
_horticulturist_; in all these, the _h_ is very weak.
(3.) RAPIDITY.
Very common English words, as _have_, _here_, _has_, _him_, _her_,
_his_, are pronounced _’ave_, _’ere_, in rapid speech. This will be
denied stoutly by many who do so every day of their lives, especially in
particular combinations. Much depends on the position of the word or the
accent.
_Ex._ Did you see ’im go?
_Answer._ I saw _him_, but not _her_.
It is _always_ dropped, at the present day, in the old word _hem_
(Chaucer), meaning _them_.
_Ex._ I saw _’em_ go.
(4.) INDIVIDUAL NOTIONS.
Particular people have particular opinions (frequently wrong ones) as to
how words should be pronounced.
I think if you exercise your _ear_ carefully, you will find it a better
guide than written statements.
-----
Footnote 1:
ENGLISH IN ENGLAND. By R. Grant White. In the March number of the
_Atlantic Monthly Magazine_, 1880.
Footnote 2:
_The Greek Classic Poets_, 1834.
Footnote 3:
_The Sacred Books of the East_ (1879). The Upanishads, page lv.
Footnote 4:
EARLY ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION, _with especial reference to Shakespeare
and Chaucer_. By Alex. J. Ellis, F.R.S.
Footnote 5:
_Kritishes Lehrgebändes der englischen Sprache._ Leipzig.
Footnote 6:
Merchant of Venice, Act i., Scene 3.
Footnote 7:
Persons who consider themselves experts in the art of aspirating might
do well to procure “HARRY HAWKINS’ H BOOK; _showing how he learned to
aspirate his H’s_,” and put their aspirative faculties to a crucial
test, by reading aloud the story of “The Hairy Ape.” The little book
cannot be too warmly recommended as a practical and amusing method of
learning to aspirate.
Footnote 8:
See Skeat’s ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. _Oxford
University Press_, 1880.
Footnote 9:
The following gentlemen kindly furnished the writer with an account of
their habitual pronunciation of words in which the silent H is
implicated:—Mr Matthew Arnold; Mr Samuel Brandram; Mr Robert Browning;
Rev. Derwent Coleridge; The Very Rev. the Dean of Chichester; Right
Hon. W. E. Forster; His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon;
Professor Huxley; Mr Henry Irving; Sir Wilfrid Lawson; His Eminence
Cardinal Manning; Sir James Paget; Mr F. E. Sandys (Public Orator of
Cambridge); Right Hon. Lord Selborne; Right Hon. Lord Sherbrooke; Rev.
C. H. Spurgeon; Very Rev. Dean Stanley; Mr Edmond Yates; and a
distinguished member of the present Ministry (1880).
Footnote 10:
A HIGHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR. By Alex. Bain, LL.D., Professor of Logic in
the University of Aberdeen.
Footnote 11:
NOTE (_by Professor Skeat_).—There is a ridiculous notion that _u_,
forsooth, _must_ precede GH. Hence _thogh_, rightly pronounced with
_o_, is actually spelt _though_. _Laghter_, rightly pronounced with
_a_ (as in Italian _a_), is spelt _laughter_. _Through_ is quite
correct: _ou_ as in _soup_. Spellings like _caught_, _slaughter_, are
not only mistakes for _caght_, _slaghter_, but the misspelling has
affected the pronunciation. GH is a comic question altogether.
Footnote 12:
According to _Carpenter’s Physiology_, to pronounce TH, “the point of
the tongue is applied to the back of the incisors, _or to the front of
the palate_.” Such injunctions as these are doubtless strictly
followed out by foreigners learning English, the unavoidable result
naturally being that _thin_ and _then_ become approximately “sin” and
“szen.”
Footnote 13:
This only applies to occasions on which they indulge in _English_
speech. The Anglo-Saxon WH (written _Hw_) had formerly a more palatal
sound, and while passing into ʍ had a tendency to become _f_. In the
Aberdeenshire dialect it has remained _f_; _e.g._, _fan_, _far_ =
when, where. Many such eccentric permutations are amusingly
anaglyptographed in that monument of the “Aberdeenshire Doric,” JOHNNY
GIBB O’ GUSHETNEUK. (Ed’bro’: D. Douglas.)
Footnote 14:
_Grammaire Historique_ (1867). _Par_ Auguste Brachet.
Footnote 15:
“Je n’aime pas les H aspirées: cela fait mal à la poitrine; je suis
pour l’euphonie.”—VOLTAIRE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end
of the last chapter.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
5. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
*** End of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "The letter H: past, present, and future : A treatise: with rules for the silent H. based on modern usage; and notes on WH" ***