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 Britishmanners 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 theTimes—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 sayhome andhotel; all others,’omeand’otel” Further on, he says:
H, in speech, is an unmistakable mark of class distinction in England, as every observant person soondiscovers. 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 oflearning 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, discountenanceforciblyanything 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, whenthey 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 ofwhipandwheel. 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 ofreason 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 becomingheggs, 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 beenmade 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; theTheory 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.