A Homage to English - (Not an Hommage to French)

The unpronounced aitch starts four words, if you please,
Since cooking with ’erbs is Americanese.
So just for the record, for the pedants out there,
They are honest and honour and hour and heir.

I know an ’otel is not entirely dead,
But that is pure laziness, or so Fowler said.
The dropping of aitches was the Sloane Ranger’s way,
A hotel orf Albemarle Street is jolly hard to say.

“The Law is a ass,” moaned poor old Mister Bumble,
And oleaginous Heep was ever so ’umble.
But that’s more studied ignorance for comical stress,
Not vain affectation, nor flashy finesse.

The way people speak depends on accent or place,
And just like our language, we’re an odd mongrel race.
Yet all this faux French would be best to extinguish;
Yeah, okay, get it wrong – just get it wrong in English!

Now this isn’t a loan-word we enjoyed as a snack,
When we 'liberate' words, we don’t give ’em back.
From Cornwall to Shetland, in even West Bromwich,
Don’t ever say, “Oh, Marge” – pronounce it as homidge.

Note
The Oxford English Dictionary gives ‘homage’ as a noun originating in the Middle English period, that is: 1150-1349. It’s as likely to have been derived from Medieval Latin as from Old French.

Using IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols, the English word ‘homage’ is pronounced as ʹɦɒɱɪʤ, or converting to the Latin alphabet, something like homidge or homij. The mark ʹ indicates that the stress is on the first syllable.