Part 1

THE LETTER _H_.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

=HARRY HAWKINS’S H-BOOK=; showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s. Eighth Thousand. Sewed, 6d.

“We commend the little work to the notice of all masters and mistresses.”—_Teacher._

=A WORD TO THE WISE, OR HINTS ON THE CURRENT= Improprieties of Expression in Writing and Speaking. By PARRY GWYNNE. Fifteenth Thousand. 18mo, sewed 6d., or cloth, gilt edges, 1s.

“All who wish to mind their _p’s_ and _q’s_ should consult this little volume.”—_Gentleman’s Magazine._

=A COMPENDIOUS GRAMMAR, AND PHILOLOGICAL HAND=book of the English Language, for the Use of Schools and Candidates for the Army and Civil Service Examinations. By JOHN GEORGE COLQUHOUN, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d.

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GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, WEST CORNER ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, LONDON. E. P. DUTTON AND CO., NEW YORK.

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.

_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._

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 [Illustration: symbol] as being the earliest representative of the H’s. The character first alluded to had this form, [Illustration: symbol]. The Phœnicians, who derived their Alphabet from Egypt, appear to have been desirous of “squaring the circle,” for in their hands this became [Illustration: symbol], or [Illustration: symbol]. The Greek letter was at first [Illustration: symbol]; 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 [Illustration: symbol], 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 ([Illustration: aspirate]) the mark of the aspirate, and the other half of it ([Illustration: lene]) that of the _lene_. By degrees these marks became [Illustration: symbol] and [Illustration: symbol]; 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 [Illustration: Sanskrit H] 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.