The mysterious affair of the disappearing aitch
Papi Menon -
Tuesday, August 04, 2009 4:52 PM
America is a wonderful land. When I first landed on these
shores, what struck me most was the purity of the colors everywhere. After the
well worn, used up looks of the many Indian cities I'd lived in and traveled
through, the shining aseptic primary colors of American cities seemed a
wondrous thing to behold. Of course, with time, some of the wonder of the looks
has worn off, but I still find much to marvel at in this country. This is,
after all, the land of the double cheeseburger and the sport utility vehicle, a
place where a coffee waiter can tell you with a straight face that the smallest
cup they have is a tall one. Excess is as American as apple pie.
Every once in a while, as though to compensate for all this
excess, certain things magically disappear. I know this may seem confusing to
you, gentle reader, so let me elaborate. During the last eight years of the
Bush kakistocracy (look it up), the phrase “I made a mistake” disappeared from
the American political lexicon. Sure, “mistakes were made”, and by the
proverbial boatload, but no one seemed to be making them. The first person
active voice for this particular action just up and disappeared. We did get a
few additions to the language, stellar words such as nukular and
misunderestimate, and one can only hope
that they continue to find widespread acceptance and appreciation for the
unique creatures they are, but they could scarcely make up for the inability to
make an honest mistake. With a new president, and a brave new world of hope,
one wished for these disappearances to stop. Alas, the erosion of the English
language continues unabated. And so we come to the affair of the fast
disappearing aitch.
Growing up in India, herbal remedies were an everyday affair
for common ailments. In America too, herbal supplements have become very
popular, but they seem to have lost their aitch in making the trans-Atlantic
passage, and in the New World they're reduced to erbal remedies. This was
startling to me when I first heard it, but gradually I made peace with it. Now,
however, the aitches are disappearing faster than a moose in Sarah Palin's
backyard. Human has become yuman. That stuff on top of your head is just plain
air now. It's not just the yokels saying it either. I heard Maureen Dowd,
purveyor of columns for the New York Times, say in an interview that something
was yumanly impossible. I'm not so sure – nothing seems impossible any more. In
desperation, I turned to the one place where you can always find an honest
opinion – the Internet. I tried to find my favorite dictionary, the OED, but
learned that they did not offer a free web based dictionary. The barbarians are
at the gate, and the gatekeeper quibbles over pennies!
Sadly, I turned to the one dictionary which does offer a
very serviceable online version – the rather staidly named dictionary.com. It
informed me that the omission of the leading aitch from the pronunciation of
words like human and hair are heard from speakers at all educational levels, including
professors and lawyers. I guess it is meant to be a comforting footnote, but to
me it feels like my favorite language has been cut adrift on an ocean of
uncertainty. The OED, which prides itself as the keeper of English, has
completely lost the plot on the Internet. In their greed, they've abdicated
their primary responsibility to the language, and ceded control of the online
discourse to lesser dictionaries, which look upon words like yuman and yuge
with a kindly eye. They have made a mistake, a yuge yuge mistake; or rather a
yuge mistake has been made, but I will forgive them for it, as long as they
forthwith take up their rightful position as the guardian of the gate again.
After all, to err is yuman, to forgive divine.