Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: guido wugi <wugi@brol.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: How to pronounce the letter "H"
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:52:11 +0200
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Op 15/06/2025 om 19:56 schreef Christian Weisgerber:
> On 2025-06-09, Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> APRIL 15, 2024
>>
>> Rajan found himself at the centre of a
>> linguistic storm when he was criticised by
>> viewers for saying "haitch" rather than "aitch",
>> an approach described as "horrible with a capital
>> aitch" on social media and "truly awful" in a
>> newspaper letters page.
> The more interesting question is why H is called "aitch" in the
> first place.  Well, that is prime evidence that English took the
> names of the letters from French, so Old French "ache"--/ˈatʃə/, I
> think--was borrowed into Middle English and then underwent the
> soundshifts to Present Day English.
>
> English of course has an /h/ sound, so there would have been no
> reason not to use that as the initial sound of the name for the
> letter H if English speakers had named it themselves.  The original
> Latin name was /ha/, but /h/ was already unstable in Classical Latin
> and dropped out completely on the way to Romance, causing Proto-Romance
> speakers to come up with *aca or *acca, as evidenced by its reflexes
> all over Italo-Western-Romance.  The shift Latin /ak/ > /atʃ/ > /aʃ/
> is highly specific to French, though.

I'd guess, rather /aka/ - /akə/ - ?/akʃə/ - /atʃə/ - /aʃ/ , not? -- 
guido wugi