Amol Rajan pledges to drop his ‘haitches’ in favour of ‘aitch’ in pronunciation row

Amol Rajan has pledged to change the way he pronounces the letter H after complaints he was doing it incorrectly during his stint as host of University Challenge.

The broadcaster, and former editor at The Independent, attracted criticism from viewers of the popular quiz show after saying “haitch”, rather than “aitch.”

In a blog post called 7 lessons from my first series of University Challenge, published just before the series finale, he wrote: “All my life I’ve pronounced it “haitch”, dimly aware that I was getting it “wrong”. Everyone I grew up with says “haitch”. My mates say “haitch”.

But, dear reader, I’m here to tell you: it’s “aitch.” This matters a lot to a lot of people, which is fair enough.”

He added that even though he is switching to the preferred “aitch”, that “haitch” is listed as a variant in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mr Rajan, 40, who also co-presents Today on Radio 4, did not go into further detail about why he had suddenly decided to change his pronunciation of the letter.

However he has received criticism in newspapers and online for saying “haitch” rather than “aitch.”

Geoff Carr, a Sunday Times reader, wrote into the paper to say: “I agree that the proliferation of ‘haitches’ is truly awful. Amol Rajan on University Challenge (BBC2) sounds like a small child. Where has this come from? ‘Aitch’ is far easier to say and ­kinder on the ear.”

One user on X, formerly Twitter, said: “Amol Rajan doing a great job on #UniversityChallenge, but he’s described the 8th letter of the alphabet as “haitch” 2 weeks running now. This sort of thing must be nipped in the bud…”

Another said: “Why do so many people now pronounce the letter ‘H’ as ‘haitch’, including Amol Rajan on #r4today? It’s Horrible with a capital aitch.”

A number of regular contributors to the BBC use “haitch”, including television host Graham Norton and radio presenter Nick Grimshaw.

Mr Rajan replaced long-time host Jeremy Paxman as host of University Challenge in July last year.

Kate Burridge is a senior fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and professor of linguistics at Monash University, previously wrote for The Independent that “haitch” could be a beneficial pronunciation for people learning English.

She wrote: “Whatever your visceral reaction to pronouncing H one way or the other, haitch has definite benefits for letter sound learning.

“So it’s not surprising it’s taking off in some parts of the English-speaking world. When the letter H is pronounced beginning with the letter sound it makes, children have an easier time learning its correspondence as they learn to read.”