Invisible 'H' by Jan Edwards
A recent Facebook
thread was discussing the pronunciation of A in conjunction with an invisible H
at some length. I suspect we have all
come across that old chestnut of how to enunciate ‘bath’ (or ‘grass’, ‘class’,
‘pass’) and whether it/they should be pronounced with or without the unseen H
as in ‘b-ah-th as opposed to b-a-th.
Though the
originator of the Facebook post now lives in California he is a Brit by birth,
and, his original question was to his US counterparts on how they heard those invisible
H sounds.
In his case he
was specifying the distinction between ‘ass’ and ‘arse’ as a play on words. Perhaps
not the best example as it turned out. Several people appeared genuinely
confused to learn that in the UK the word ‘ass’ generally refers to a donkey
and/or a stupid person, whilst an ‘arse’ is a part of the anatomy (and yes,
occasionally also a stupid person). This would seem to be a different question
on the surface but one can see how the confusion has arisen and why the Brits on
the thread moved on to gnaw on the age-old bone of regional contention – the
pronunciation of the humble bath.
Confused? Most
people on the thread were.
A little basic
research suggested to me that the linguists’ view appears to stipulate the hard
A is being the ancient form and AH merely a variant that arose at some point in
the 1700s; though from where nobody seems entirely sure. (Perhaps a subject for
future research on my part.)
A point that was never raised, however, was the frequently overlooked third variant which the linguists categorised as a rural AA.
A point that was never raised, however, was the frequently overlooked third variant which the linguists categorised as a rural AA.
What had this
to do with the stridency between those Facebookers? It would seem that the Brits moved on to other A words, and perceived
it as indicative not of historic usage but some mythical north-south
divide and, to a lesser but no less vocal degree, of class. This view of
southern accents as being automatically ‘posh’ has always been one that has genuinely
perplexed me.
I grew up in
Sussex where that AA was anything but silent. The As of my youth were drawling
and elongated. They had very little to
do with received pronunciation and everything to do with the Sussex dialect
that is now seldom heard but was still common in the 1950s and 60s. Its
gentle cadence would slot an extra A into just about any word. The humble ‘ah, yes’
of a general acknowledgement, for example, being drawn out into a single ‘AAAA’
sound. Bath would be pronounced with as b-aaa-th. A little ovine perhaps but if
you imagine any of the southern rural accents reaching from Sussex, though Hampshire
and on to Somerset and Dorset you won’t be far off the mark. It was and is the
accent of farm labourers and milkmaids and seafaring men.
Given that the A is invisible it had made me wonder how these would be portrayed in our
writing. Or, indeed, whether they should even be given a second thought. Will a
reader hear the presence or absence or that invisible H (or AAs for us country
folk) purely from knowing the speaker at that point hails from Reading or
Ripon?
Having tried to
portray a Sussex accent in both my country novel Sussex Tales, and to a far lesser extent in my recent crime drama Winter Downs, I know just what a precarious
path it can be to tread. Written phonetically the accent is almost
indecipherable to those unfamiliar with it. Used sparingly it runs the risk of
becoming the kind of ubiquitous rural accent frequently adopted on radio and tv;
which belongs to nowhere and nobody. All
we can hope to do is give a flavour and trust that character portrayal fills
any minor gaps.
You need look
no further than ‘rough’, ‘bough’ and ‘cough’ to realise that English pronunciation
is seldom bound by anything so simple as rules. In which case I have come to
the conclusion that the mystery of the missing As and Hs are not anywhere near
so important as some would have us think; and for writers at least (in the
interests of sanity) is probably best left unsolved.
***
Jan Edwards’s fiction has appeared
in The Mammoth Book of Dracula; Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty; MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories and
many other crime, horror, pulp, weird fiction, main stream and urban fantasy
anthologies. She has been a part
of a scripting team for a Dr Who DVD due
out in November 2017. (Details of all works here)
Also available:
Comments
I grew up in South London and have always said 'bahth', despite having lived in the West Midlands for more than forty years. My daughter grew up in the West Midlands and says 'bath'. I'd always assumed it was just a north/south pronunciation thing.
I think we probably use a short 'a' in bath up here in Edinburgh - one of my main pronunciation battles is with an Irish colleague over the word 'scone'.