Dear all

For years I've been irritated when I heard our American friends say 'erb' instead of 'herb' and could never understand why they did it, this morning I came across this news item below, and now feel rather silly. So I apologise although I've never really moaned about it, I have expressed irritation about it to my friends. I now consider myself better educated and shall no longer get irritated.

Debs

"How bland our turkey stuffing would taste without herbs but why do some Canadians pronounce herb's "h," and others don't?

From about 1200, when it was adopted from French, until about 1500, the word was "erb," without an "h" to say. The "h" was added during the Renaissance when people felt that English spellings should reflect Latin word origins.

Yet the British did not start pronouncing the "h" until the late 19th century, when compulsory education taught spelling and pronunciation reflected the word's letters.

To this day, Americans, and about 50 per cent of Canadians, retained the older pronunciation. "

Source - The Star Toronto Edition (http://www.thestar.com/living/article/708802---h-an-ingredient-of-modern-herb)

Herb Society Webmistress

Thanks for this, Debs. I had no idea!

This is something which has driven me batty as well, but now I shall think again.

Maybe we should go back to Anglo Saxon times and start using "wort" instead!

Sarah

I am not sure whether these people talk about erbs or herbs, but here is a delightful web site introduced to me by the American medieval gardening lot.

http://www.cwf.org/history/CWLand/plants.cfm

The whole business of introducing foreign names into local vocabulary is a bit of a nightmare, American mangling of European artists and composers names grate horribly specially that ubiquitous Paul Van Go, who sounds like a bottle of laxative. On the other hand the Brits attempts to get their tongues around French and Italian colloquialisms can be utterly cringe-making.

It seems to be acceptable in our media these days to adopt Latin words in to English and to treat them as such, my particular bete noir (try saying that in American!) is 'bacteria' which is already plural getting an 's' stuck on the end when there is more than one of the things.Is this an indication of evolving language or blind ignorance? I suspect it is only my generation that feels uncomfortable with it, but with the wretched olympic games about to be held in what the politicians refer to as "stadiums" we are going to have to get used to it. Personally I think when the games are on, I shall take the opportunity to visit the USA and look at some erbs.