Phonological history of English fricatives and affricates

H-dropping
H-dropping is a colloquial term used to describe the omission of initial in words like house, heat, and hangover in many dialects of English, such as Cockney and Estuary English. The practice is generally stigmatised. The same phenomenon occurs in many other languages, such as Serbian, and Late Latin, the ancestor of the modern Romance languages. Interestingly, both French and Spanish acquired new initial [h] in mediæval times, but these were later lost in both languages in a "second round" of h-dropping (however it should be noted that some dialects of Spanish re-acquired 'h' from Spanish 'x'). Many dialects of Dutch also feature h-dropping, particularly the south western variants. It is also known from several Scandinavian dialects, for instance Älvdalsmål.

H-dropping in English is found in all dialects in the weak forms of function words like he, him, her, his, had, and have; and, in most dialects, in all forms of the pronoun it — the older form hit survives as the strong form in a few dialects such as Southern American English and also occurs in the Scots language. Because the of  unstressed have is usually dropped, the word is usually pronounced  in phrases like should have, would have, and could have.

See also
 * List of h-dropping homophones

H-adding
The opposite of h-dropping, so-called h-adding, is a hypercorrection found in typically h-dropping accents of English. A classist stereotype, commonly found in literature from late Victorian times to the early 20th century, holds that some lower-class people consistently drop h in words that should have it, while adding h to words that should not have it. An example from the musical My Fair Lady is, "In 'Artford, 'Ereford, and 'Ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly hever 'appen". In practice, however, it would appear that h-adding is more of a stylistic prosodic effect, being found on some words receiving particular emphasis, regardless of whether those words are h-initial or vowel-initial in the standard language.

Words borrowed from French frequently begin with the letter h but not with the sound. Examples include hour, heir, hors d'oeuvre, hono(u)r and honest. In some cases, spelling pronunciation has introduced the sound into such words, as in humble, hotel and (for most speakers nowadays) historic. Spelling pronunciation has also added to the English English pronunciation of herb,, while American English retains the older pronunciation.

Taut-taught merger
The taut-taught merger is a process that occurs in modern English that causes to be dropped in words like thought, night, daughter etc.

The phoneme was previously distinguished as  after front vowels,  after back vowels. and sometimes was lost in most dialects with compensatory lengthening of the previous vowels. >, later > "night" by the Great Vowel Shift.

sometimes became, with shortening of previous vowel.

Inconsistent development of combined with ambiguity of ou (either  or  in Early Middle English) produced multiple reflexes of orthographic ough. Compare Modern English through , though, bough , cough or , rough.

The spelling gh that occurs in current orthography usually indicates that in Middle English the word in question had a velar fricative /x/ in the pronunciation. During the sixteenth century, this fricative was still pronounced, in some circles at least; by the seventeenth century it had disappeared in the precursor of RP, except that in some cases /x/ had been switch instead to a labiodental, /f/. Hence the spelling gh is now either silent, as in right, high, eight, bough, dough, daughter, through, or else corresponds to /f/, as in cough, rough, laugh, tough etc. The resulting multiplicity of pronunciations corresponding to orthographical ough is notorious.

In traditional-dialect of the north of England and Scotland, /x/ may remain in many of the words in which it was found in Middle English. Where it does not remain as such, it often happens that it yielded /f/ in items where standard English has zero consonant, or vice versa. Hence on the one hand we have the stereotype Scots phrase bricht moonlicht nicht (for bright moonlight night; compare standard etc.), and on the other hand occasional relic forms such as  for trough (RP ) and  for light, recorded by SED in southern West Yorkshire (at localities y30 ans y21 respectively). In both cases the local accent (as opposed to traditional-dialect) lacks.

Quite apart from traditional dialect, a fair number of names in the Celtic countries contain in the local pronunciation. This is the case with Buchan and Auchtermuchty in Scotland, Amlwch and Loughor  in Wales. A more English, less Celtic pronunciation commonly involves the replacement of this by : English people and other outsiders call Buchan. In Ireland is common corresponding to putative earlier, as in Donaghee, Haughey, though some speakers do have a  there. Thus there is a sense in which the consonant system even in Standard English, as pronounced in the Celtic countries, includes, whether as a residualism going back to Middle English or as a loan phoneme from Scottish Gaelic, Welsh or Irish.

Even in England can be said to hold a tenuous and marginal position in the consonant system of educated speakers, though certainly no longer found in Standard English in words which contained it in Middle English. Here it is clearly a loan-phoneme.

Many people know of the word loch and its Scottish guttural sound. The composer Bach is often called ; the vowel does not perfectly reflect the German short, but the consonant matches the German pronunciation fairly well. Some English people, too, will attempt an in surnames of Celtic origin such as MacLachlan. The hyperforeignism for Munich is very common;  is also familiar as an attempt to pronounce the Welsh, as in Llangollen.

A velar or uvular fricative has also been taken into South African English along with Afrikaans words containing it; as gogga.

Some accents in northern England show slightly different changes, for example night as and in the dialectal words owt and nowt (from aught and naught). Also, in Northern England, the distinction between wait and weight is often preserved, so those speakers lack the wait-weight merger.

Wait-weight merger
The wait-weight merger is the merger of the Middle English sound sequences (as in wait) and  (as in weight) that occurs in most dialects of English. (Wells 1982: 192–94, 337, 357, 384–85, 498)

The main exceptions are in Northern England, for example in many Yorkshire accents, where these sequences are often kept distinct, so that wait is distinct from weight  and late  does not rhyme with eight.

The distinction between wait and weight is an old one that goes back to a diphthongisation of Middle English before the fricative  which was represented by gh in English. So in words like weight became  and subsequently  was lost as in Standard English, but the diphthong remained.

Wait on the other hand is a Norman French loan word (which in turn was a Germanic loan) and had the Middle English diphthong that was also found in words like day. This diphthong merged with the reflex of Middle English (as in late) and both ended up as  in the accents of parts of northern England, hence the distinction wait  vs. weight.

Lock-loch merger
The lock-loch merger is a phonemic merger of and  that is starting to occur in some Scottish English dialects, making lock and loch homonyms as. Many other varieties of English have borrowed foreign and Scottish as, and so not all people who pronounce "lock" and "loch" alike exhibit the merger.

The English spoken in Scotland has traditionally been known for having an extra consonant sound, but that is starting to disappear among some younger speakers in Glasgow.

The observations of the merger happening were investigated by auditory and acoustic analysis for a sample of the children from Glasgow pronouncing words that traditionally have in Scottish English.

Dental fricatives
Main article Pronunciation of English th

See also
 * The then-thyn split was a phonemic split of the Old English phoneme /θ/ into two phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ occurring in Early Middle English which resulted in then and thyn (thin)'s starting with different inital consonant, /ð/ and /θ/.
 * Th-fronting is a merger that occurs (historically independently) in Cockney, Newfoundland English, African American Vernacular English, and Liberian English (though the details differ among those accents), by which Early Modern English merge with.
 * Th-stopping is the realization of the dental fricatives as stops, which occurs in several dialects of English.
 * Th-alveolarization is the pronunciation of the dental fricatives as the alveolar fricatives
 * Th-debuccalization is the pronunciation of the dental fricative as the glottal fricative  when it occurs at the beginning of a word or intervocalically, occurring in many varieties of Scottish English.

Initial fricative voicing
Initial fricative voicing is a process that occurs in the West Country where the fricatives, , and  are voiced to , ,  and  when they occur at the beginning of a word. In these accents, sing and farm are pronounced and.

A similar phenomenon happened in both German and Dutch.

S-retraction
S-retraction is a process where "s" is pronounced as a retracted variant of auditorily closer to. S-retraction occurs in Glaswegian, in Scotland.

Seal-zeal merger
Seal-zeal merger is a phenomenon occurring in Hong Kong English where the phonemes /s/ and /z/ are both pronounced making pairs like "seal" and "zeal", and "racing" and "razing" homonyms.

Pleasure-pressure merger
Pleasure-pressure merger is a phenomenon occurring in Hong Kong English where the phonemes and  are both pronounced  making "pleasure" and "pressure" rhyme.

Sip-ship merger
The sip-ship merger is a phenomenon occurring in some Asian and African varieties of English where the phonemes /s/ and /ʃ/ are not distinguished. As a result, pairs like "sip" and "ship", "sue" and "shoe" etc. are homophones.

In the cartoon series, South Park, this pronunciation is made fun of by recurring character Tuong Lu Kim's distinctive pronunciation of the word, "city".

Ship-chip merger
The ship-chip merger is phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Zulu English where the phonemes /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ are not distinguished. As a result, "ship" and "chip" are homophones.

Zip-gyp merger
The zip-gyp merger is a phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Indian English where /z/ and /dʒ/ are not distinguished, making "zip" and "gyp" homophonous as /zɪp/, and "bridges" sound like /brɪzɪz/.