Interpolated Aitches
SIR,—Mr. Michael Gill, the undergraduate of last week, informs your readers that he heard a stage hand in Edinburgh make the following reply when asked what opera was to be performed on the next evening:
That there Lohengrin. 'Orrible hopera ; starts hearty, finishes late. Lots of changes. All them there 'elmets, an' swans, an' pigeons, an' things. . . . 'Orrible hopera." Sir, do you believe that Mr. Gill heard these barbaric yawps ? I don't ; and the fact that he solemnly tells us he did makes me feel certain that a man with an car so untrue had no business to be prancing about an operatiratage even in the capacity of an incompetent chorister. I am doubtful if he heard "That there Lohengrin " or "All them there 'elmets," but, even if he produces evidence that he heard them, I will swear an oath in heaven that he did not hear "'orrible hopera " and " starts hearty." Any stage hands who may be carried around the provinces by an opera company are highly skilled men, none of whom is likely to be more than middle-aged. The rest of the stage hands arc usually local men, and there cannot be many- people in Scotland, even if they, are addicted to stealing stones from cathedrals end the use of a deplorable dialect Called Lallans, who speak in the strange manner described by Mr. Gill, who has surely forgotten two facts: (a) that Charles Dickens died in 1870 ; and (b) that the first of a series of compulsory education Acts was enacted in that year.
We have now had a fairly efficient system of general education in this country for more than eighty years ; and it must have had an impressive effect on the interpolated as well as the dropped aspirate. In Ireland and in Scotland, but not, oddly enough, in Wales, the misuse of aitches is rare. When there seems to be misuse, it is only in words such as " hotel" and " herb " where the omitted aitch was formerly correct. W. B. Yeats habitually pronounced hotel " 'otel," as I did myself until I settled in London and had to conform to the custom of educated people lest I should be regarded as a semi-illiterate Cockney. An Irishman is more likely, therefore, than an Englishman ,to be sensitive to interpolated and dropped aspirates ; and I confidently assirf lhat the interpolated aitch is so rare in England today that it is practically extinct. I sometimes hear it from old men and women, especially in villages, but I seldom hear it uttered by middle-aged people, and I never hear it used by anybody under thirty-five. I had tholight it was only obsolete Americans who have not read a novel since the death of Dickens who believed that The interpolated aspirate is still in common use in England, and I am deeply shocked to learn that a man young enough to be an undergraduate should be capable of telling your readers that he heard a stage hand in Edinburgh not only saying " that there " and " them there," but "'orrible hopera " and " starts hearty." He has only to pronounce the last two phrases aloud to discover that they are difficult to say. Anyone who says "'orrible hopera " must make an effort to say them at all ; and the whole point of interpolated and dropped aitches is that they are usually uttered by slovenly speakers to whom effort is repulsive, unless, as sometimes is the case, they are seeking to be emphatic, when they may use an aitch where they should not. Mr. Gill must cultivate his ear and learn to listen. I assurb him that not only has Dickens been dead for a very long time, bat that nearly all the generation which-interpolated aspirates is dead, too. The aitch-droppers remain, but arc dwindling, and will be extinct in another generation.
What, unfortunately, we are getting in their place are flat-vowellers. I lately listened to a broadcast talk by an Oxford don who stamped on every vowel he encountered, squashing it so horribly that it became " ow" instead of " oh." If this man, who should instantly be deprived of his post as a teacher, were to stand in front of a looking-glass and observe what happens to his mouth when he pronounces " oh," he would. observe that it takes the roundness of the vowel when it is pronounced properly, but that it lies Gown flat when it is distorted into "ow." It is these vowel-distorters, whose main object in life seems to be to close every vowel they see, who need correction, and perhaps Mr. Gill, when he has learnt to use his ears, will give it to them.—Sincerely,
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