Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Why do people leave off initial aspirates?

The chief victims of this are "huge," "human," and "humor."

To quote (and bowdlerize) Eddie Izzard, there's a goddamn "h" in it!

There are some words where the initial aspirate is silent. "Herbs," the source of the above Izzardian rage, is one of them (in the States). "Honor" is another, for which I blame the French. Those are accepted, and correct, pronunciations.

All these people can say "hawk," and "handsaw," and "horrible," and "hitman." What is it about the letter "u" that makes the throat fail utterly? And with these people there isn't even a cute Cockney accent to make up for it!

Don't drop your aitches, folks. You sound like an idiot.

1 comment:

Dave said...

I feel as if the adjectival form "Izzardian" should be used much more frequently than it presently is.