H'aspiration

Today

My nephew had a little rant this week about people who say "haitch" when they should say "aitch". He said that it was to do with delusions of grandeur, but I'm not so sure, I think it's more ignorance and confusion about the fact that the letter aitch is aspirated in actual use while the word to describe it isn't.

In My Day

When Paul was in the ambulance service in Sussex, back in the late '70s, his daily work was delivered via the radio by an officer working in central control. Training standards were not high in those days and I sometimes suspected that otherwise incompetent officers were shunted into control because they weren't safe on the roads.

He's had control officers who couldn't pronounce place names "I've a call to an address in War-Cester villas" "Don't you mean Worcester?" (Pronouncing it correctly) "It says 'ere "War-Cester".

Then there was the time they were sent to an accident "At the roundabout in Lewes". "There are three roundabouts in Lewes, Control, do you know which one?" "I dunno - you'd better try them all". Which might explain why ambulances sometimes took longer than they should to arrive at their destination.

The ambulances all had an alphabetical call sign, relating to the location; thus, Lewes was "L" or "Lima". Paul much enjoyed this communication to a vehicle operating out of Hove:

"'otel one, 'otel one, please h'attend a h'accident at h'acres the bakers in 'Assocks for an 'ead h'injury".

Who knows what that particular control officer's aspirations were?