Reversal of merger

[John Hewson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote:

>
> A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English.
> This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to
> completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/
> even variably with zero.  This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to
> spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of
> East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/.  But it has not
> become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain
> many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate
> line of descent to consider.

As a footnote, it is interesting that we have, in fact, massive
hypercorrection. The _h_ that occurs in the spelling of heir, hour,
honest, and honour (and add herb for Americans) was never pronounced,
these being borrowings from Old French. Alongside these we have all the
French borrowings with initial _h_ (never pronounced in French
because it had already been lost in Classical Latin) which are pronounced
with /h-/ in Standard English and in those dialects that have preserved
phonemic /h/.

A good example is _humble_, from Latin _humilem_, /umile(m)/ already in
Caesar's time, and found in the sixteenth century Book of Common Prayer in
such phrases as "an humble and contrite heart", now pronounced, by those
still familiar with this liturgy, with both _an_ and /h-/!




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John Hewson, FRSC                               tel: (709)737-8131
Henrietta Harvey Professor of Linguistics       fax: (709)737-4000
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9
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