No offence taken — I just mean to clarify that the proportion of British speakers who do this an-then-soft-H thing is actually pretty small.
Having said that, there are two constituencies that do it, I guess:
- Those who do it out of upper class background or affectation: using the French soft H that survives in the American pronunciation of 'herbs' is a class signifier.
- And those who do it out of broader dropped-H slackness; it's not out of the question that someone would say "it's an 'istoric day" run together, in a variety of regional and rural accents.
So if you meant the latter, then, yes! Probably more people do it as a result of dropping H more generally than out of upper class identification.
But in the middle of those two, most of us, I think, use the hard H, and certainly "BBC English" has moved in that direction.
No offence taken — I just mean to clarify that the proportion of British speakers who do this an-then-soft-H thing is actually pretty small.
Having said that, there are two constituencies that do it, I guess:
- Those who do it out of upper class background or affectation: using the French soft H that survives in the American pronunciation of 'herbs' is a class signifier.
- And those who do it out of broader dropped-H slackness; it's not out of the question that someone would say "it's an 'istoric day" run together, in a variety of regional and rural accents.
So if you meant the latter, then, yes! Probably more people do it as a result of dropping H more generally than out of upper class identification.
But in the middle of those two, most of us, I think, use the hard H, and certainly "BBC English" has moved in that direction.