Chapter I: Part 1

THE LETTER _H_.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

=HARRY HAWKINS’S H-BOOK=; showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s.
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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.

GRIFFITH & FARRAN
SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS,
WEST CORNER ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, LONDON
E. P. DUTTON & CO., NEW YORK

MDCCCLXXX.

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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 as being the earliest representative of the H’s. The character first alluded to had this form, . The Phœnicians, who derived their Alphabet from Egypt, appear to have been desirous of “squaring the circle,” for in their hands this became , or . The Greek letter was at first ; 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 , 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—

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 () the mark of the aspirate, and the other half of it () that of the _lene_. By degrees these marks became and ; 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 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.