From the campus studios of Sarlan University, this is Robcast, a lighthearted podcast for learners of English, with Roger Charlton and Peter Tisha. I listeners and welcome to another episode of Robcast. My name is Peter Tisha. And this is the podcast about all the difficult things you might encounter when you are learning the English language. Yes Peter, one of those difficulties I think is the large number of discrepancies between the way things are written and the way they are pronounced. Yeah, tell me about it. And this is nothing new in fact. I remember in Shakespeare we come across a line, an insult it's meant to be, thou zed, that is you, zed. And an American would say, z, thou unnecessary letter. So even Shakespeare was questioning whether we really need 26 letters of the alphabet. Speaking of useless letters, there's one letter that I find even more difficult, which is the letter h. Oh yes, that is difficult. The problem being, sometimes it's pronounced and sometimes it's not. And sometimes it's pronounced in one country and not in another. True enough, I have one example for this actually. I think you would not say an herb. I personally would say a herb. A herb. Yes. Okay, I'd say an herb. So that's sort of a plant that you can season things with. Yeah. Spelled, h, e, r, b. And of course this gives a difference or produces a difference for the article preceding it. Yeah. An herb. I don't pronounce the h. I say a herb. Uh-huh. Although some people in Britain would say an herb. And that is... Well that's making it even more difficult. People of Caribbean origin, I think Jamaicans for example, would pronounce it. Let's call it the American way. A herb. Uh-huh. And why is that? Well, I guess they're interested in a certain type of plant that you can smoke. Ah, you mean Maruana? Yeah. Illegal substance. Illegal substances? Yeah, I guess maybe not in their country, you know. So they would say an herb. Yeah. But you would still stick for the general thing a herb. Yeah. But we all say an honest man. Yeah. In other words, we don't pronounce the h there. Uh-huh. It's written but not pronounced. On the other hand, there will be a hotel which everybody basically would say a hotel wouldn't they? Yeah. And rather conservative speakers in Britain might say a hotel. And drop the h on... That is using un. And then there's no h. Probably because they think, hey I know French and the French say, hotel. Maybe. I think it sounds kind of posh. I think that's on the way out. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. There is such a phenomenon as h-dropping isn't there? There is indeed. And it's usually stigmatized. It's not regarded as standard English or good English or correct English. Could you give an example of that? Lots of people... Well, lots of people pronounce hardly any h's in their own dialect. And this again is nothing new. George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Pigmalion. Right. Which was turned into a musical, my fellow lady. Much much later. Yeah. And there's Eliza Doe Little, the main character who is a very simple market girl. Yeah, a flower girl, I think. That's right. And a phonetician, somebody who is an expert in phonetics, pronunciation, decides that he can train her to speak in such a way that she is acceptable in high society. High society. High society, you know. Okay. Something like that. And he eventually marries her. And she does the h-dropping all the time. She does, yes. One of the things he trains her to say is, let me get it right. And Hartford, Herifage and Hampshire, Hurricanes hardly ever happened. That's hard even for an English native. So she would say, in Hartford, out of thought, and okay, I get it. Okay. So that's a dialect thing. But let me give you one last example that's difficult in standard language. Sometimes you have a word or two words of the same origin where the h is pronounced in one and not pronounced in the other. That's an heir. heir to the throne. An heir to the throne, the one who gets the throne when the king is dead. And what he will inherit is a heritage. Right. So the heritage, what you get is pronounced with an h. The person who gets it, the heir, same origin, it's not pronounced. That's right. Yes. My God, this is hard. One letter, folks. Just one simple letter. And you get all that much trouble. We won't talk about the Z. But perhaps we should finish with a little helpful guidance for people. But on the whole, in English, the decision between saying, ah, an un, depends on pronunciation, not spelling. So you have to say, ah, university. Because it's a, yeah. Yeah, sound is the first one. And as we've just pointed out, things like an honest man. Right. But a human being, which is sort of a shock, sound, uh-huh. So it all really depends on pronunciation. OK. Not on spelling. Did we confuse you, folks, out there? We hope not. If you're confused, go to our website www.ropecast.de and read all about H's pronounced or unpronounced. Goodbye. Bye. You've been listening to ropecansd brought to you by Sarland University, featuring Roger Trouten and Peter Tisha. Tune in for the next edifying episode on your podcast dial.