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H-dropping or aitch-dropping is the elision of the voiceless glottal fricative or " H-sound", . The phenomenon is common in many of English language, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical development or as a contemporary difference between dialects. Although common in most regions of England and in some other English-speaking countries, and linguistically speaking a neutral evolution in languages, H-dropping is often social stigma as a sign of careless or uneducated speech, due to its strong association with the lower class.
The reverse phenomenon, H -insertion or H-adding, is found in certain situations, sometimes as an allophone or hypercorrection by H-dropping speakers, and sometimes as a spelling pronunciation or out of perceived etymological correctness. A particular example of this is the spread of 'haitch' for ''.
The instances of in Syllable coda position were lost during the Middle English and Early Modern English periods, although they are still reflected in the spelling of words such as taught (now pronounced like taut) and weight (now pronounced in most accents like wait). Most of the initial clusters involving also disappeared (see H-cluster reductions). As a result, in the Standard English varieties of Modern English, the only position in which can occur is at the start of a syllable, either alone (as in hat, house, behind, etc.), in the cluster (as in ), or (for a minority of speakers) in the cluster (as in if pronounced differently from wine). The usual realizations of the latter two clusters are and (see English phonology).
Cases of H-dropping occur in all English dialects in the weak forms of like he, him, her, his, had, and have. The pronoun it is a product of historical H-dropping – the older hit survives as an emphatic form in a few dialects such as Southern American English, and in the Scots language.David D. Murison, The Guid Scots Tongue, Blackwodd 1977, p. 39. Because the of unstressed have is usually dropped, the word is usually pronounced in phrases like should have, would have, and could have. These can be spelled out in informal writing as "should've", "would've", and "could've". Because is also the weak form of the word of, these words are often erroneously spelled as should of, would of and could of.
H-dropping also occurs in some Jamaican English, and perhaps in other Caribbean English (including some of The Bahamas). It is not generally found in North American English, although it has been reported in Newfoundland (outside the Avalon Peninsula).Wells, J.C., Accents of English, CUP 1982, pp. 564, 568–69, 589, 594, 622. However, dropping of /h/ from the cluster /hj/ (so that human is pronounced ) is found in some American dialects, as well as in parts of Ireland – see reduction of /hj/.
H-dropping in English is widely social stigma, being perceived as a sign of poor or uneducated speech, and discouraged by schoolteachers. John Wells writes that it seems to be "the single most powerful pronunciation shibboleth in England."Wells (1982), p. 254
For many H-dropping speakers, however, a phonological appears to be present, even if it is not usually realized – that is, they know which words "should" have an , and have a greater tendency to pronounce an h in those words than in other words beginning with a vowel. Insertion of h may occur as a means of emphasis, as noted above, and also as a response to the formality of a situation.Wells (1982), p. 322. Sandhi phenomena may also indicate a speaker's awareness of the presence of an – for example, some speakers might say "a edge" (rather than "an edge") for a hedge, and might omit the linking R before an initial vowel resulting from a dropped H.
It is likely that the phonemic system of children in H-dropping areas lacks a /h/ entirely, but that social and educational pressures lead to the incorporation of an (inconsistently realized) /h/ into the system by the time of adulthood.Wells (1982), p. 254.
Some English words borrowed from French language may begin with the letter but not with the sound . Examples include heir, and, in many regional pronunciations, hour, hono(u)r and honest. In some cases, spelling pronunciation has introduced the sound into such words, as in humble, human, hotel and (for most speakers) historic. Spelling pronunciation has also added to the British English pronunciation of herb, , while American English retains the older pronunciation . Etymology may also serve as a motivation for H-addition, as in the words horrible, habit and harmony: these were borrowed into Middle English from French without an ( orrible, abit, armonie), but as all three derive from Latin words with an , they would later acquired an in English as an etymological "correction". The name of the letter H itself, "aitch", is subject to H-insertion in some dialects, where it is pronounced "haitch". (In Hiberno-English, "haitch" has come to be considered standard, consistent with their not being H-dropping dialects). Various dialects of Newfoundland English exhibit the same pattern.
| Homophonous pairs ! ! ! IPA ! Notes |
| With weak vowel merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| With pane-pain merger and wait-weight merger. |
| With trap-bath split and father-bother merger. |
| In non-rhotic accents. |
| With fleece merger or meet-meat merger. |
| With th-fronting. |
| With th-fronting. |
| With weak vowel merger and G-dropping. |
| With pane-pain merger. |
| In non-rhotic accents. |
| With weak vowel merger. |
| With weak vowel merger and G-dropping. |
| In non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger. |
| With horse-hoarse merger. |
| With toe-tow merger. |
| With toe-tow merger. |
| With toe-tow merger. |
| In non-rhotic accents. |
| In non-rhotic accents. |
| In non-rhotic accents with lot-cloth split. |
| With fern-fir-fur merger. |
| In non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger and pour-poor merger. |
| With pour-poor merger. |
| With horse-hoarse merger and pour-poor merger. |
| With pour-poor merger. |
| In non-rhotic accents with horse-hoarse merger and pour-poor merger. |
| With pour-poor merger. |
When dealing with Greek, this process is called psilosis. The phoneme in Ancient Greek of Classical Athens, occurring predominantly at the beginnings of words and originally written with the letter H and later as a rough breathing, had been lost by that period in most Ionic Greek dialects and from all Greek dialects during the late Hellenistic/Roman era. Hence it not a phoneme of Modern Greek being approximated in foreign loanwords by or (or ).
The phoneme was lost in Vulgar Latin, the ancestor of the modern Romance languages. Already in the Imperial period, there is attested evidence for early h-loss. French language, Spanish language, and Romanian have acquired new initial in medieval times, but they were later lost in the first two languages in a "second round" of H-dropping. Some dialects of Spanish have yet again acquired from , which as of now is stable.
It is hypothesized in the laryngeal theory that the loss of or similar sounds played a role in the early development of the Indo-European languages.
In Maltese language, existed as a phoneme until the 19th century. It was then lost in most positions, sometimes lengthening the adjacent vowel. Chiefly word-finally it was merged with //. The latter phoneme, in turn, may now be pronounced by some speakers, chiefly in the syllable onset.
Modern Hebrew is in the process of losing ; the phoneme is either replaced by (word-initially) or entirely absent (in all other positions) in the speech of contemporary young speakers.
In Tagalog language, is sometimes elided into an immediately succeeding vowel, such as "huwag" from /huˈwaɡ/ to /ˈwag/ and "sabihin" from /saˈbihin/ to /saˈbin/.
Many dialects of Persian language spoken in Afghanistan (i.e. Dari) do not realize the phoneme , except in high-prestige literary words or in hyper formal speech. The deletion of the phoneme may cause a preceding short vowel to be reinterpreted as a long vowel, likely due to phonological rules in Dari prohibiting short vowels and long vowels from being equal in length.Rees, Daniel A. "Towards Proto-Persian". Georgetown University 2008 For example, <قهر> (qahr /qahɾ/, "anger") is often realized as qār /qɑːɾ/ (as if it was written like <قار>), and <فهمیدن> (fahmīdan /fahmiːdan/, to understand) is often realized as <فامیدن> ( fāmīdan /fɑːmiːdan/). Between vowels, the phoneme may be replaced by a glide ( or ) resulting in words like <خواهش> (x(w)āhiš /xɑːhɪʃ/, "I want") being realized as <خایش> ( xāyš /xɑːjʃ/) or, in dialects that no longer distinguish āy and ay, this may be further reduced to xayš /xajʃ/ (as if spelt <خیش>).
The modern Javanese language typically does not have initial and intervocalic in its native words, except between the same vowels. For instance, in modern Javanese, the word for "rain" is udan, from Old Javanese hudan, which ultimately comes from Proto-Austronesian *quzaN. The letter "ꦲ" in traditional Javanese script, which had the value in Old Javanese is now used in most cases to represent and in its base form. In modern Javanese, initial and intervocalic appears only in loanwords from Indonesian and English. Since the Javanese people have been exposed to Dutch for far longer than they are with Indonesian or standard literary Malay (which only started somewhere after 1900 and amplified after 1945, excluding Surinamese Javanese), many of the words borrowed from Dutch have also lost the phoneme, such as andhuk /aɳˈɖ̥(ʰ)ʊʔ/ "towel" from Dutch handdoek.
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