Why do Hs get dropped in some languages? Greek mythology is full of names starting with an H, yet the H sound is dropped in modern Greek, and also in Italian, French and Cockney English.
Jo Murphy
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Waikanae, New Zealand
It takes regular, even breathing to talk out loud. The letter H is aspirated. This means it requires conscious breath control, a little punch of air, to say 鈥淗鈥� even if we aren鈥檛 aware we are doing this.
Try saying 鈥淚 want some herbs鈥� then 鈥淚 want some 鈥榚rbs鈥�. You will then be aware of that extra breath, however slight. It is easier for an Italian person to say 鈥� 鈥榚rb鈥� in the middle of (often fast) speech.
Bob Ladd
Edinburgh, UK
The question treats 鈥淗鈥� as a special case, but there is no real basis for this. Some languages have H sounds and some don鈥檛, but you can say the same about most sounds: English and Albanian have 鈥淭H鈥� (as in 鈥渢heme鈥�), but French and Russian don鈥檛; German and Turkish have 鈥溍溾��, but English and Polish don鈥檛; most European languages have 鈥淧鈥�, but Arabic doesn鈥檛. The reasons for these omissions are obscure: partly historical (languages can lose sounds as well as gaining them), and partly just the way things are.
鈥溾�橦鈥� has a special status as a social marker. The ancient Roman poet Catullus made fun of someone who dropped his aitches鈥�
The special thing about H mostly concerns European spelling. Latin had an H sound that disappeared from its modern descendants (French, Italian, etc.), but because spelling is often conservative, in many European languages, H is written even though it isn鈥檛 pronounced. This is also true of lots of other letters, especially in English and French.
So to a native English speaker, the absence of an H sound in French or Italian is noticeable in a way that the lack of 鈥溍溾�� in English or Spanish isn鈥檛, because as a foreign learner, you have to remember that 鈥淗 is silent鈥�.
In England, 鈥淗鈥� also has a special status as a social marker, as in the questioner鈥檚 reference to Cockney, an accent associated with working-class Londoners in which Hs get dropped or added unnecessarily. All languages have social markers, but the fact that 鈥淗鈥� plays this role in England may make the silent H in Greek, Italian or French seem especially significant.
Incidentally, 鈥淗鈥� had the same social function in classical Latin: one poem by the ancient Roman poet Catullus makes fun of a certain Arrius, who added H sounds to words unnecessarily.
鈥淗鈥� is actually a bit unusual because, in many languages, it occurs only at the start of a syllable, but that is a separate topic.
To answer this question 鈥� or ask a new one 鈥� email lastword@newscientist.com.
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