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.