In some English accents this is pronounced ‘haitch’. The standard is pronunciation is ‘aitch’. In Liverpool the pronunciation is something of an article of faith: Catholics use the former, Protestants the latter.
I think Geoffrey Sampson (p110, Writing Systems) gives the most straightforward explanation. The original Latin name for H was he, because it was a h sound followed by the neutral (to Etruscans anyway) vowel. However, the letter became known as ahha in popular Latin, perhaps due to its weakness. In Romance languages the H was generally dropped as an independent sound, and there arose all sorts of difficulties in naming the letter. Without a true h sound, the letter became /axxa/, and finally /akka/. Just as the Latin cow, vacca, gave Norman /vatše/ and modern French /vaš/, vache, so /akka/ gave Norman /atše/. This became /aš/, ache, in modern French, where the sound changes of Middle English produced /eitš/.
Normally, Indo-Aryan languages call consonants X "X-maker"; k is kaakar etc. But in Panjabi, kakaar refers only to the five attributes of a Sikh, all beginning with the letter k. However, the name of the letter k is kakkaa, g is gaggaa etc.
And in contrast, how did English "accident" /‘aksident/ deviate from Latin /akkid. . . /? A more probable pronunciation would be /‘assident/ or /‘akkedent/.
This discussin reminds me of the French h aspiré (aspirated h) and h muet (mute h). In practice, the h has been mute for centuries (but it did have a sound in archaic French) and there’s no such thing as an h aspiré. The only reason for its name is that it doesn’t allow for elisions (dropping the e in the article le et la, i.g., l’homme vs. le héros) and liaisons (pronouncing the s in plural words before starting with a vowel, i.e., les homes /lezom/ and les héros /le ero/).
The H, as has been pointed out, has no sound in modern Romance languages (some dialect speakers of Spanish pronounce it like a Spanish j in some words, where there was an etymological f - but it is pronounced in Romanian, but Romanian just likes to be different, hehehe) and, for that reason, Italian has decided to eliminate it at the beginning of words, except for the forms ho, hai, ha, and hanno - first, second, third person singular forms and third plural form of the verb avere (to have) so as not to confuse with o (or), ai (to the), a (to) and anno (year), and in some interjections like ah, ahimè and a few others.
To summarize, the state of things now in Romance languages is:
Latin: humanus, Portuguese and Spanish humano, Italian umano, French humain, Romanian uman (it doesn’t have an h here).
[quote author=Brazilian_dude link=board=etymology;num=1090328954;start=0#9 date=07/24/04 at 20:49:31]Then you’re on another level than I am, my dear Garzo. I’ve never had any caipirinha in my entire life (I don’t drink, you see).
Then you’re eating an awful lot of frozen drinks, perhaps? Must be terribly difficult finding enough foods with sufficient water contents to properly hydrate…
-Tim
...so would the English expression "I don’t drink" be an idiom…?
There’s something stupid people sometimes say here, "Ele não bebe, come com farinha" (he doens’t drink, he eats with flour). What the hell is that supposed to mean? Well, I think I’m asking in the wrong forum, LOL.
Brazilian dude
P.S. Well, of course I know what it means (someone goes on drinking binges and such) but it doesn’t make any sense what flour has to do with it.
Dude, is it a pun on "grains" rather than on the flour itself? Think how many grain-based alcohols people have learned to [s]bake[/s] brew throughout history!
Then you’re eating an awful lot of frozen drinks, perhaps? Must be terribly difficult finding enough foods with sufficient water contents to properly hydrate…