Dropping 'er haitches

[pne]

I wonder whether Amy thinks she's learning Maltese, or maybe French or Spanish or something. At any rate, she seems to like dropping 'er haitches.

For example, ham and hammer become am and ama; what people have on their head is è; and the little spiky animal that can never be buggered at all is an eġġo.

On the other hand, her German word for bicycle is something along the lines of aha. But then, since Fahrrad doesn't have a pronounced h in it (the written letter here just serves as a mark that the first vowel is long), perhaps she's turning the r into a ħ and is really saying aħa... must be Maltese, then! :)

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

I had considered that -- but don't they put in "haitches" sometimes, just in the "wrong" places?

Or is that only when Cockneys try to speak standard English but get it wrong, rather than when they speak their native variety?

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Or is that only when Cockneys try to speak standard English but get it wrong, rather than when they speak their native variety?

I think so; I'm not even sure /h/ is a distinct phoneme in the idiolects of some Cockney speakers. There's an old joke about a Cockney couple:

"...we 'ad all hour children given names that start with a haitch. There's 'Enry, 'Arry, 'Arriet, 'Erbert, 'Enrietta and 'Orace. Hall hexcept the last one. We called 'er Halice."