Well as I am English and the language we are talking about is English I can categorically tell you that in England it is herb with an aitch. American English is quite a different matter
Location: Close enough to make a beer run during a TV timeout
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Originally Posted by missdpuck
Do Canadians say "He is in hospital" instead if "He is in the hospital"? I notice you seem to say "I am going to university" rather than " I m going to the university " or just " going to college".
And it's catchup.
"I'm going to university" means I am currently enrolled in classes at the University.
"I'm going to the university" means that is my plan for the day- likely to scope out the co-eds.
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From Wiki answers "herb" comes from the Latin word "herba" which means grass. This means that the English word "herb" probably probably grew in the English language without French introduction. Beside, the British are famous for having frenchified spellings in their language (like 'colour' and 'aeroplane'), so it would stand to logic that if it had French origins, it would be pronounced "erb" in the UK. It most definitely is not. Therefore, the "herb" we use in the English language is "herb" and not " 'erb" especially since the American language is rooted in British English and not the other way around. It has always been pronounced "herb" in the UK ever since the beginning of time.
Came into English from French.
Until the sixteenth century the word was usually spelled erb — the English got it from the French, who didn’t say the first letter either. Down to the nineteenth century, long after the h had been added under later French influence, that was also the way it was said. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American colonists took this state of affairs with them. During the nineteenth century, British people began to say the first letter, as a result of what linguists call a spelling pronunciation. So Americans kept the old pronunciation while British speakers changed it. A sneaky trick, but there it is.
Usage Note: The word herb, which can be pronounced with or without the (h), is one of a number of words borrowed into English from French. The (h) sound had been lost in Latin and was not pronounced in French or the other Romance languages, which are descended from Latin, although it was retained in the spelling of some words. In both Old and Middle English, however, h was generally pronounced, as in the native English words happy and hot. Through the influence of spelling, then, the h came to be pronounced in most words borrowed from French, such as haste and hostel. In a few other words borrowed from French the h has remained silent, as in honor, honest, hour, and heir. And in another small group of French loan words, including herb, humble, human, and humor, the h may or may not be pronounced depending on the dialect of English. In British English, herb and its derivatives, such as herbaceous, herbal, herbicide, and herbivore, are pronounced with h. In American English, herb and herbal are more often pronounced without the h, while the opposite is true of herbaceous, herbicide, and herbivore, which are more often pronounced with the h.
In our family, it is "Ke Tzap" which the two syllables literally mean Tomato and Sauce in Chinese and has the same origins for where the word Ketchup originated.
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