have never heard anyone -- whether in person, on TV, educated, uneducated -- say "feb-roo-ary" in the United States. Maybe I should see an otolaryngologist. Oh, but I already do. Sorry, but the old "you can find 'ain't' in the dictionary, too" argument doesn't hold any water here. One of the five dictionaries I consulted was the 1961 edition of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from, you know, back when real English was still taught and spoken. Who knows what kind of ideas are being crammed into the heads of innocent tykes now? The fact remains that "feb-roo-ary" does NOT roll blissfully off the tongue. Any attempt to get the masses to pronounce the second month in that manner is doomed to failure. I suggest it is better to work at eliminating my pet peeve: the failure of most people -- whether they feature themselves as educated or not -- to distinguish between and use properly the words "lie" and "lay." Maeve on March 9, 2011 3:56 pm Susan H, Like all of us, Bono learned to speak the way he heard the people around him speak in his home and in his neighborhood. He was probably taught the standard pronunciation of the letter H at school. Certainly he would have heard it modeled by his English teachers. Bono is an extremely intelligent, articulate man. Since he decided to pronounce the H as "haitch" in those carefully-produced HIV ads, I can only believe that it was a deliberate professional choice. Michael