Diachronic and Synchronic Variability of the English Phoneme /h

This paper reviews the literature about the origins of the phoneme /h/ in English, with special focus on its diachronic and synchronic variability and argues that the variation of /h/ in Middle English can still be found in today’s productions of /h/ by native speakers—and learners—of English. The phonetic changes leading to the defective distribution of /h/ are described. The mutation of /x/ (deriving from IE *k) to /h/ occurred during the transition from Old English to Middle English. The glottal fricative [h]—that used to be an allophone of /x/—turned into a phoneme and appeared in clusters with nasals, liquids and approximants in late Old English. During the transition leading to Middle English, /h/ disappeared before sonorants but remained robust in initial position. Gradual lenition took place in intervocalic position while vocalisation occurred in final position. The realizations of /h/ in contemporary English are affected by rather similar changes. In the 20th and in the 21st centuries, variation of English /h/ seems to be extralinguistic—diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic—and unstable on the one hand, and linguistic—syntactic, lexical, phonological and phonetic—and quite stable, on the other.