Haitch?

[bainbrig]

Heard on BBC London TV this morning:

“W HAITCH Smith” (for W H Smith).

There is no such word as HAITCH,

Or have they changed the language?

[maggiebee]

How do you soothe a language pedant?
There, their, they're

[bhg481]

Jahulaye - but aitch doesn't and that's the correct spelling.
A phonetic language was tried about 60 years ago and was a failure. In the north we had grass and bath, in the south they had graass and baath, amongst other things. Regional accents completely screw up a phonetic system.

[davegosling]

Whether / weather
Whales / Wales
Which / witch

[Cloverjo]

On a similar theme, my son gets irritated by my saying "where's it to?" rather than "Where is it?" I know it's not standard English, and I'm not uneducated. It's a Somerset thing. I do it mostly to wind him up now.

[maggiebee]

Davegosling, with my Dundonian/Scottish accent, these words don't sound similar.

[woofgang]

but its spelt "aitch"

[davegosling]

Quite right, maggie!

[Cloverjo]

Another one is 'eck cetera' for 'et cetera'. Susie Dent seems to say this a lot, which surprises me, but she'd know better than me so perhaps that is the correct way of saying it. Sounds wrong to me though.

[woofgang]

no its not correct Cloverjo

[maggiebee]

Another one that puzzles me is when English announcers say "An 'otel"
I would say "A hotel" as we never drop the H up here in jock land.

[tonyav]

as we never drop the H up here in jock land.

Well unlike us Black Country folk yo ay spakin proper English then, maggie ;-)

[bhg481]

hotel was traditionally pronounced 'otel until a few years ago. It's started being aspirated like aitch.