Grand National won by an horse

You would never write that of course, that would be so wrong, but you do still see the occasional die-hard writing about an hotel, or an horrific event.

There is a reason for it, or rather there used to be, when it was common to drop the spoken H at the beginning of many words, and therefore it would be strange to say a ‘otel, or a ‘orse. There are still a few words such as honest where the H is still silent, and therefore you would automatically write that you were giving an honest opinion. A nice reminder of this historical quirk is that Americans still drop the H when pronouncing herbs, because it was customary to do so, both in Britain and across the water at the time when the two versions of the language were being formalised. We Brits have restored the H since those days, but the older pronunciation remains in use on the other side of the pond.

My mind was jogged back to this peculiarity the other day while reading a book, where somebody passed the reins of his horse to an hostler. This had me scrabbling for the dictionary, because I am fascinated by our odd language, and the oddities that make it odd. I had never come across hostler before, so is this actually an origin of ostler, somebody who looks after horses? (Just to add to the fun, you don’t pronounce the t, it is oss ler).

The book in question was by Matthew Harffy, one of my favourite authors of 9th century historical fiction based in Northumbria and beyond, and I can usually trust him to get things right. He researches his place names to work well for the era that he is writing in, so I was pretty confident this would be somehow accurate. And so it came to pass. The word stems from Middle English, a hosteler, somebody who tends to horses at an inn, a hostel. The H was not pronounced however, so Matthew Harffy was correct, and the correct way to write this, as it would have been at the time, was an hostler (pronounced, an ossler). Today that word has been further shortened to ostler.

You just have to love our nutty language.

So what about an hotel? When I was growing up, if anybody writing for the Daily Telegraph had dared to write a hotel, they would have been fired on the spot, even before the flurry of letters arrived from the Sir Henry Huffington-Gussets of this world. These days, however, it makes you look a little archaic to do so. Time has moved on. Language is constantly moving, and you have to move with it. Nowadays for example it is acceptable when appropriate to start sentences with And or But in fiction, or in media articles, but that is still frowned upon in more formal writing. Not so long ago, the purists would have burned your books in the street if you had dared to commit such a written sin. They would also have some sort of fit because I failed to use commas either side of 'for example' in this paragraph.

Our wonderful language is there to be enjoyed, both in reading and in writing. It is a delight to read older books, and experience how language has changed since the writings of Gavin Maxwell from the post-war years, or Conan Doyle a century ago. If you love words as much as I do, then finding a gem such as Harffy's an hostler makes reading a delight.

It has been an honour writing this for you.