THE SILENT H.
It has been seen that the letter H is a signal to aspirate. The term mute, otiose or SILENT H, implies that the signal means nothing, is useless, and is intended to be disregarded; that it is a false beacon, an orthographical encumbrance, and a trap for the unwary. Lumber of this sort is to be found in certain words, but in which ones, has always been a profound mystery from the fact of it having been so often explained; and information was unobtainable, by reason of a multiplicity of informants. Where the H is silent, has been difficult to determine; why the H is silent, cannot be determined at all. This much has long been divulged; it is silent in hour, honour, honest, heir, and most of their formatives; the rest is darkness—in the dictionaries. On no point of English pronunciation have authorities more notoriously disagreed than on that of words beginning with H; and if any one wishes to see the fathers of English Orthoepy at loggerheads, or the Doctors of Modern English Pronunciation in a muddle, let him glance at the H section of their several dictionaries.
Be it, however, remembered that the work of the writer of pronouncing dictionaries is one of extreme difficulty, and that his short-comings are often of the most excusable kind to be met with in the whole field of literature. The etymologist has scientific fact to deal with; the lexicographer is by tacit consent, and in virtue of that fiction of fictions “etymological conservation,” allowed, to some extent, to jurisdict or appeal to precedent in matters of orthography; but the professional orthoepist is expected to catch and register the passing sound of a nation’s speech. There is no discretionary power attached to his office; his duty is to discover who are representative speakers among his contemporaries, and—by a sort of arithmetical process—to determine what pronunciation is prevalent among them. Hence his entire task is one of appalling magnitude. But he has discovered a meretricious means of lightening his labours, which consists in referring to his predecessors in cases of extra uncertainty; the result frequently being that he gives as modern an obsolete pronunciation. It is evident that several words in which the silent H is concerned have undergone this treatment.
In the very good old times, ere spelling-books had created “bad spellers,” every writer was, in a small way, a phonographer; that is, he wrote words as he heard them pronounced. The system did not favour uniformity of spelling, but resulted in most words being written in two or three different ways, some in fifteen, or even twenty. Instead of animadverting on the subject of these discrepancies, or attributing them to the undetermined value and inadequate supply of alphabetical symbols, we may better serve our present purpose by simply noticing that it was customary for early scribes to insert the letter H in some words wherein it is now generally supposed to have been silent. We see at once that the facts of the case militate against this modern belief in ancient silent H’s. For, if the majority of these early penmen, whose minds were neither in an appreciable degree biassed by precedent, nor haunted by the forms of orthographical bogies, habitually inserted an H, it is evident that the letter was intended to have a phonetic significance, and had very probably a strong phonetic value. The same conclusions have been arrived at by Mr Ellis, who sees no reason for believing that H was not audible in honor, honest, and hour in the time of Chaucer—say 1400. Collateral evidence in support of Mr Ellis’s views is to be found in the fact of the doubtful words occurring in alliterative verses of an early date; and of their occurring in such a manner as to allow of the supposition of their H’s being implicated in the alliterations as, what are termed by Professor Skeat, “rime-letters.”
In the age of Chaucer (and, in diminishing degrees, down to our own day), it was customary to drop the H’s of short, unaccented syllables in poetry, provided that these were not placed in a position immediately succeeding a metrical pause. But, as far as the writer is aware, the sixteenth century is the earliest that has furnished a record of any words having been habitually written with H’s and pronounced without them. Palsgrave, in 1530, gave honest, honour, habundance, and habitation as having each an otiose H. Salesbury (1547), in his Welsh Dictionary, says that H is held silent in “French and Englysh, in such wordes as be derived out of Latyne, as these: honest, habitation, humble, habit, honeste, honoure, exhibition, and prohibition;” whereas he aspirates it in humour. Gill (1621) adds hour and hyssop as having a mute H; and aspirates in herb, heir, and humbleness. Jones (1701) makes it mute in swine-herd, Heber, Hebrew, hecatomb, hedge, Hellen, herb, hermit, and some others. Smart (1836) reduced the whole list of words with a silent H to heir, honest, honour, hostler, hour, humble, and humour; and modern usage consents to a still greater reduction.
The suppression of H’s has been observed to have been chiefly exercised in words coming to us from the Latin, through the French language. It seems that Salesbury, quoted above, regarded this, or something like it, as having been a rule. But we find records of some words of neither French nor Latin origin having also had silent H’s assigned to them; and we have the still more important fact that the Franco-latin words in which the H is aspirated are greatly in excess of those in which it ever was silent—the latter really constituting a very insignificant minority. In the third line of The Vision of William,
In habite as an hermit unholy of workës,
we have convincing proof that Langland (1332–1400?) had no regard for the etymology of his Aspirates. Certainly, French words of Latin origin have constantly taken the aspirate when their etymology was in the least obscure. Thus, hearse (which most people do not know is French, and still less do they think it represents the Latin [acc.], hirpicem[[8]]) has always retained its Aspirate. Moreover, it were one thing to be able to prove that a certain pronunciation would be etymologically correct, and another to show that the pronunciation of a language is corrected by etymology. We are, in fact, at liberty to regard the English silent H, as being practically devoid of active etymological sponsors.
Taken collectively, these different data very strongly suggest the idea of silent H’s having been, if not born of, at least very assiduously fostered, and promoted with almost paternal solicitude, by the judgment or fancy of theoretically-inclined orthoepists. If, on the other hand, the early orthoepists were really honest in their pretensions to chronicle the actual pronunciation of their day, the result of their endeavours still remains open to the objection of inaccuracy, by reason of the special difficulty they will have experienced in recognizing a standard to go by. Nothing can, now-a-days, screen them from a suspicion of having exercised their powers of imagination equally with those of observation; nor can their partial disagreements exonerate them from the charge of a traditionary collusion in cases of extra perplexity. If asked, with what weight this same charge might be brought to bear on our more recent compilers of “modern pronouncing dictionaries,” the writer of the present treatise would, under the plea of coram non judice, take refuge from the onus of pronouncing an invidious decision. But if asked why the comparatively modern dictionaries quoted on the opposite sheet, are, in some instances, so flagrantly at variance with the best modern usage with regard to pronunciation, he would unhesitatingly reply that they are so chiefly out of deference to the opinions of the gentleman who wrote the first complete pronouncing dictionary and lived over a hundred years ago.