Why do Americans not pronounce the “H” in herb and homage?
Herb is standard American English; a 1993 pronunciation survey, ~90% of Americans said herb without the ‘h’. (The proper name, Herb, keeps it pronouced.) Herb is a fine example of a type of linguistic conservatism found in American English. Until the sixteenth century the word was usually spelled “erb”– it was a French word, who didn’t say the “h” either. Right up until to the nineteenth century, long after the ‘h’ had been added due to further icky French influence, that was also the way it was said. “erb.” Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonists toward the Americas took their pronounciation with them. During the nineteenth century, the British people started to sound the first letter, in a “spelling pronunciation.” So, the Americans are saying it the old fashioned way, and the Brits are playing around with their new-fangled words.
