/hy/

[Damien Hall]

dInIs,

You wrote:

'Is the cluster /hy/ reduced to /y/ in lower-status London (England,
not Kentucky) speech? That is, is "huge" pronounced "yuge"? My handy
sources are silent on this. Reference?'

I haven't got a reference for you, but as a native I can tell you that
lower-status London speech does reduce /hy/ to /y/ in 'huge'.  As far as I can
tell it's part of the general tendency to 'drop your aitches', which I do
myself when I'm not speaking carefully, though if introspection is worth
anything I don't actually do it for /hy/, I don't think.  Interesting.  Perhaps
there's a hierarchy involved where the commoner /h-/ onsets (/hI-/, /ha-/,
/ho(w)-/) are (far) more likely to have their aitch dropped than the
lower-frequency ones?  For example, I can easily visualise a Cockney saying

" 'Ere, 'old this 'uge pot a second.  Careful, it's 'ot!"

and I think that I myself (middle-class, West London, definitely not a Cockney)
could / would drop all those aitches except the one in "'uge".  Speaking very
casually, I might even drop them all in the same sentence.

[Other 'droppings' have been left in in the example above, for clarity:  'pot'
and 'hot' would actualy also drop their /t/, so
/pot/ > /po?/  (/?/ = glottal stop)
/hot/ > /(?)o?/
]

But I'm talking about my own idiolect alone, so I'll stop.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania