Buzz
It could be the one thing both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders share: they say huge as "yuge."
It’s not so unexpected that Sanders and Trump exhibit similar speech patterns. Both were born in New York in the 1940s. In fact, the "yuge" substitution for huge has long been a notable characteristic of the New York City dialect, although it’s not exclusive to New York. It can also be heard in Philadelphia and sporadically throughout the U.S., as well as in the Irish cities of Cork and Dublin.
So, do people simply omit the "h" sound for no apparent reason? Certainly not. This "h"-dropping occurs in a particular context—specifically, in words beginning with a "hyu" sound. If someone drops the "h" in huge, they’re likely to drop it in humor, humid, humiliation, humongous, and Hugh as well.
Words beginning with a consonant followed by "yu" have long experienced the loss of a sound. Consider the British pronunciations of tune, duty, suit, and news ("tyune," "dyuty," "syuit," "nyews"). This represents the older pronunciation. In both the U.S. and other English-speaking regions, the sound cluster preceding the u tends to simplify by dropping the "y." However, this only occurs when the initial consonant is formed by the tip of the tongue contacting the ridge behind the upper teeth (such as "t," "d," "s," "n," and "l"). For other consonants, the "y" sound remains (c[y]ure, p[y]unitive, b[y]eautiful, m[y]usic, f[y]ew…).
In East Anglia, the "y" doesn’t persist. Many towns there have eliminated the "y" clusters entirely, removing the "y" in all environments. In this region, people say "bootiful" and "foo" for beautiful and few, and they pronounce "hooge" for huge.
"Hooge" and "yuge" are two ways of simplifying the "hyu" sound. In East Anglia, the "y" is dropped, while in New York, it’s the "h" that disappears. This isn't the first instance of a sound cluster being reduced in different ways. A similar case exists with the word what, which originally began with the "hw" cluster ("w," like "y," is a glide sound between a consonant and a vowel). The word was pronounced "hwat," and other words like "hwen," "hwistle," and "hwale" followed suit. In some places—especially the American South, Scotland, and Ireland—it still retains this pronunciation. However, in most areas, the "h" was dropped, and we now say what and whale without it. In some words, such as who and whole, the "w" was dropped instead.
So, yes, it’s complicated. The takeaway here is that these consonant + glide clusters are unstable, which makes them prone to simplification, and this simplification can manifest in different ways. As for why it leads to the use of "yuge" in New York specifically, we can’t say for sure. However, it's likely tied to the dynamics of generation, class, status, and the eclectic mix of people in New York—people who both adapted and contributed as they interacted with each other. That’s the chaotic nature of how language evolves over time. It happens because we're yuman.
