Herb
it's got a fucking H at the beginning. Americans take note.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 10:32, 21 replies)

But I love to smoke de 'erb, mon.

( flake has nothing against your right leg, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 10:35, closed)

that's different
that's just dropping the H
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 10:38, closed)

But when you're talking about a single herb,
Some people prefix with "an" and drop the H - "an erb" - easier to say than "a herb", I guess. Pretty lazy really. But that's not written, it's just a silent "h", like the "p" in "bath".
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:13, closed)

I pee noisily in my bath.

( flake has nothing against your right leg, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:23, closed)

Hooray! :-D

(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 13:03, closed)

I find it odd that some H words get an "an" in front of them
like "an hotel"

I blame the french
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:23, closed)

Well
the French do make the distinction between hard H and soft H so you can write l'herisson, but le hibou.
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:43, closed)

You can't write "l'hérisson".
It's "le hérisson", "le hibou", "le homard, "la Haute Loire", etc.. You *can* say "l'hôtel", "l'hôpital", "l'heure", etc..
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:54, closed)

Oh darn
I knew there was a difference and picked the wrong word
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:57, closed)

This one's our fault
Apparently we used to say 'erb but in the intervening centuries since the colonists sailed away we added the H.

We also created the funny spellings (colour, etc) as well.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:24, closed)

doesn't surprise me
Erb just sounds stupid. like an affectation
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:32, closed)

I don't believe this
I think it's just an American affectation. They think herb is a foreign word so drop the h to make it sound more so. Like pronouncing 'homage' as "ommarje" instead of "hommidge". Pronouncing something in a frenchy way does not make you sound smart.
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:45, closed)

Nukuler aluminum

( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:52, closed)

You make the point perfectly

(Smale is stuffed, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 11:58, closed)

Annoyingly
I read recently that the discoverer of aluminium did actually call it "aluminum" but some anal types at the Royal Society (or somewhere similar) insisted that all the elements around that time ended in
"-ium".

So, for once, the damned yanks are spot on.
(greatoldone Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl f'tagn, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 12:01, closed)

But then they started saying it right.
And changed it again in the 1920s. Fucks me off no end when writing for American journals. Especially they way they railroaded "sulfur" as the international chemical spelling. When's the transfer to fosforus?
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Mon 12 Apr 2010, 12:27, closed)

The 'funny spellings' have been with us longer than Modern English has
it's not like we randomly changed it some time last century. The fault for the differences in spelling lies firmly with Noah Webster.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 19:17, closed)

And another thing...The second letter is "e", not "u"...

"'Urb" indeed. An American ex' of mine would say that all the time. I was smoking a lot of weed at that point in my life. Largely because of her.
(caescarna Hell's Roomba, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 13:11, closed)

Good Lord! I'm sorry, all, but the United States and Britain separated quite a few years ago, and therefore our languages have been changing independently. It's really a little irritating when every other post is "Another country's people don't talk like I do; I hate it!"
(AlfishKK, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 18:05, closed)

this would be fine
if you didn't persist in referring to it as 'English'.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 12 Apr 2010, 19:13, closed)

Ok then
Why do Americans insist on emphasising the last syllable of French verbs such as porter?

Some of the film posters for Prêt-à-Porter showed a phonetic spelling as "pret a port-AY". When most Frenchies give least emphasis to the last syllable of such infinitives.

So has French changed independently of this American linguistic snapshot as well, or are Americans just a bit ignorant?
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Tue 13 Apr 2010, 14:01, closed)