h insertion

The insertion of syllable-onset h in items such as heggs for eggs or hitch for itch is also found in Bahamian English. As with the loss of syllable-initial h, it is more characteristic of Anglo-Bahamian than Afro-Bahamian speech (Shilling 1980; Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). In fact, an empirically based comparison of isolated Afro-Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian communities in Abaco (Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003) indicates that h insertion is rarely found among speakers in the black community though it is relatively common in the cohort white community. The insertion of h is sensitive to ethnic and status distinctions, but it is fairly widely distributed among white Bahamians in different locales, including a transplant community that settled in Florida Keys (Huss and Werner 1940). It is also sensitive to phonetic environment so that it is more likely to occur in intervocalic sequences such my heldest ‘my eldest’ than when it follows a consonant as duck hegg’ ‘duck egg’, thus facilitating the retention of a natural CVC canonical sequence. It can be quite salient socially in some phonetic environments, such as utterance-initial position in a sentence like Heggs are good for ‘Eggs are good’.

The phonological status of h insertion is elusive. At first glance, the occurrence of h insertion may seem like a type of hypercorrection related to the fact that variable h dropping as discussed above is a fairly prominent trait of Bahamian English. A number of cases of h insertion occur on items that have no historic h in English, for example, hitch for itch or even hup for up. This suggests that it may have arisen as a compensatory production by speakers unsure of the phonological status of initial h in words. However, it should be noted that hypercorrection tends to be related to social situations where speakers feel obliged to use more acrolectal forms, or situations calling for more “careful” speech (Labov 1966). Bahamians who insert h appear to do so in relatively casual conversations where there is no apparent obligation to speak “properly”. Although some lexical items may be more prone to h insertion than others (e.g. hage for age, honion for onion), we have found no consistent pattern defined strictly on a lexical basis. Instead, h insertion simply seems to be a phonetic option for word-initial vowels that co-exists with syllable-onset h dropping. In most cases, h dropping is much more frequent than h insertion but they clearly co-exist as traits of Bahamian English, showing both socially constrained and individually based variation. The existence of both h dropping and h insertion can result in some potential confusion of lexical items such as hear and ear or heel and eel, but in most cases there is little perceptual misinterpretation in actual conversation.