It often assumes an excrescent d or t, as cavaltry, horsemen, crockerty, crockery, scholard, scholar.
H has the sound of wh in whoam, home. This word, however, as Mr. Slow points out in the Preface to his Glossary—
Bob. Drat if I dwon't goo wom to marrer.
Zam. Wat's evir waant ta go wimm var.
Bob. Why, they tell's I as ow Bet Stingymir is gwain to be caal'd whoam to Jim Spritely on Zundy.—
is variously pronounced as wom, wimm, and whoam, even in the same village.
As stated at page 72, the cockney misuse of h is essentially foreign to our dialect. It was virtually unknown sixty or seventy years ago, and even so late as thirty years back was still unusual in our villages. Hunked for unked is almost the only instance to be found in Akerman, for instance. But the plague is already fast spreading, and we fear that the Catullus of the next generation will have to liken the Hodge of his day to the Arrius (the Roman 'Arry) of old:—
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias ...
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
Touching this point the Rev. G. Hill writes us from Harnham Vicarage as follows:—'I should like to bear out what you say with regard to the use of the letter h in South-West Wilts. When I lived in these parts twenty years ago, its omission was not I think frequent. The putting it where it ought not to be did not I think exist. I find now that the h is invariably dropped, and occasionally added, the latter habit being that of the better educated.'
H becomes y in yeäd, head.