Opinion: What is happening to H?

There’s a UK game show that I like to watch. It’s called Lingo and it’s the standard word game turned into a full TV show. It’s based on a US game show of the same name.

While watching it, I realized that I’ve come to form an immediate opinion on the education level of the contestants, not based on their appearance, not based on their accents, not based on their assortment of tattoos, but on how they pronounce the letter H.

I realized that I made a value judgement on that, depending upon whether they said aitch or if they said haitch.

It got me wondering if I’m the only one that gets that opinion. Turns out, I’m not.

Linguistic prestige

I checked with some linguist friends and I’m told that what I’m experiencing is a very common phenomenon called linguistic prestige, where society conditions us to associate certain accents or pronunciations with education, status, or intelligence.

And on a show like Lingo, which focuses heavily on spelling and language, hearing a letter pronounced differently can feel really jarring.

Why We Make These Judgments

In Australian schools, aitch has traditionally been taught as the only correct way to say the letter. When someone says haitch, our brains automatically flag it as a mistake, based on what we were taught.

There is also social conditioning where media, prestige accents (like the BBC or our traditional ABC), and formal institutions have spent decades reinforcing aitch as the standard, while labeling haitch as non-standard and a result of a lack of education.

Change is afoot

Interestingly though, Australia is in the middle of a massive linguistic shift with this specific letter. While older generations of Australians almost exclusively say aitch, younger generations (under 40) are rapidly adopting haitch. For many younger speakers, it feels more logical because the letter name actually contains the sound it makes (unlike aitch).

Historically, haitch did have a foothold in Australia, and apparently was tied to Irish Catholic schools, while aitch was more tied to state and Anglican schools. I had plenty of Irish Catholic teachers over the years but I have no recollection of any of them pushing for haitch. Today, that religious divide is essentially gone, yet the pronunciation difference remains widespread.

Apparently, linguists now consider haitch as a regional and generational feature of Australian English, rather than a reflection of someone’s actual education level. They consider it just language evolving in real-time.

What do you say? And does the way someone says it, leave any sort of impression on you?

(And an awesome Unsplash image by Gustavo Sánchez)

2026-09-07