Part 5

_Latin_—The _h_ is commonly sounded, as _horrid_. But _honorary_ and _honorarium_ follow the French word _honour_, and commonly omit _h_.

_Greek_—The _h_ is important, as in _history_, _hexagon_, and should be sounded.

(2.) ACCENT.

Accent often drowns the _h_. Thus _history_ takes _h_, but _historical_ is usually _istorical_. To find this out, do not go by what people _say_ they say (which is one thing), but by what you hear them say, which is a _very different matter_. Compare _hebdomadal_, _hallucination_, _hereditary_, _hiatus_, _histrionical_, _hippopotamus_, _hexameter_, _hieroglyphic_, _histology_, _horizon_, _hidalgo_, _homœopathy_, _horticulturist_; in all these, the _h_ is very weak.

(3.) RAPIDITY.

Very common English words, as _have_, _here_, _has_, _him_, _her_, _his_, are pronounced _’ave_, _’ere_, in rapid speech. This will be denied stoutly by many who do so every day of their lives, especially in particular combinations. Much depends on the position of the word or the accent.

_Ex._ Did you see ’im go?

_Answer._ I saw _him_, but not _her_.

It is _always_ dropped, at the present day, in the old word _hem_ (Chaucer), meaning _them_. _Ex._ I saw _’em_ go.

(4.) INDIVIDUAL NOTIONS.

Particular people have particular opinions (frequently wrong ones) as to how words should be pronounced.

I think if you exercise your _ear_ carefully, you will find it a better guide than written statements.

Footnote 1:

ENGLISH IN ENGLAND. By R. Grant White. In the March number of the _Atlantic Monthly Magazine_, 1880.

Footnote 2:

_The Greek Classic Poets_, 1834.

Footnote 3:

_The Sacred Books of the East_ (1879). The Upanishads, page lv.

Footnote 4:

EARLY ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION, _with especial reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer_. By Alex. J. Ellis, F.R.S.

Footnote 5:

_Kritishes Lehrgebändes der englischen Sprache._ Leipzig.

Footnote 6:

Merchant of Venice, Act i., Scene 3.

Footnote 7:

Persons who consider themselves experts in the art of aspirating might do well to procure “HARRY HAWKINS’ H BOOK; _showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s_,” and put their aspirative faculties to a crucial test, by reading aloud the story of “The Hairy Ape.” The little book cannot be too warmly recommended as a practical and amusing method of learning to aspirate.

Footnote 8:

See Skeat’s ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. _Oxford University Press_, 1880.

Footnote 9:

The following gentlemen kindly furnished the writer with an account of their habitual pronunciation of words in which the silent H is implicated:—Mr Matthew Arnold; Mr Samuel Brandram; Mr Robert Browning; Rev. Derwent Coleridge; The Very Rev. the Dean of Chichester; Right Hon. W. E. Forster; His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon; Professor Huxley; Mr Henry Irving; Sir Wilfrid Lawson; His Eminence Cardinal Manning; Sir James Paget; Mr F. E. Sandys (Public Orator of Cambridge); Right Hon. Lord Selborne; Right Hon. Lord Sherbrooke; Rev. C. H. Spurgeon; Very Rev. Dean Stanley; Mr Edmond Yates; and a distinguished member of the present Ministry (1880).

Footnote 10:

A HIGHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR. By Alex. Bain, LL.D., Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen.

Footnote 11:

NOTE (_by Professor Skeat_).—There is a ridiculous notion that _u_, forsooth, _must_ precede GH. Hence _thogh_, rightly pronounced with _o_, is actually spelt _though_. _Laghter_, rightly pronounced with _a_ (as in Italian _a_), is spelt _laughter_. _Through_ is quite correct: _ou_ as in _soup_. Spellings like _caught_, _slaughter_, are not only mistakes for _caght_, _slaghter_, but the misspelling has affected the pronunciation. GH is a comic question altogether.

Footnote 12:

According to _Carpenter’s Physiology_, to pronounce TH, “the point of the tongue is applied to the back of the incisors, _or to the front of the palate_.” Such injunctions as these are doubtless strictly followed out by foreigners learning English, the unavoidable result naturally being that _thin_ and _then_ become approximately “sin” and “szen.”

Footnote 13:

This only applies to occasions on which they indulge in _English_ speech. The Anglo-Saxon WH (written _Hw_) had formerly a more palatal sound, and while passing into ʍ had a tendency to become _f_. In the Aberdeenshire dialect it has remained _f_; _e.g._, _fan_, _far_ = when, where. Many such eccentric permutations are amusingly anaglyptographed in that monument of the “Aberdeenshire Doric,” JOHNNY GIBB O’ GUSHETNEUK. (Ed’bro’: D. Douglas.)

Footnote 14:

_Grammaire Historique_ (1867). _Par_ Auguste Brachet.

Footnote 15:

“Je n’aime pas les H aspirées: cela fait mal à la poitrine; je suis pour l’euphonie.”—VOLTAIRE.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 5. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.