Why do the British pronounce “herb” with an /h/?

Why don’t Americans pronounce herb with an /h/?

It turns out that the American pronunciation is the original one! The word herb was borrowed from Old French erbe ‘grass, herb, animal feed’ around 1300, at which point neither English nor French pronounced (or spelled it) with an /h/.

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But during the Renaissance in the 1400s, this was one of the many words that scholars decided to respell to more closely match their classical Greek/Latin origins. So writers began spelling the word as ⟨herb⟩, to match the original Latin herba ‘young plant; grass, herb, weed’.

These silent letters that have been intentionally added despite not matching the actual pronunciation of the word are called unetymological letters.

It wasn’t until the 1800s that many British speakers began pronouncing an /h/ at the beginning of the word to match its spelling, making this another interesting example where American English is actually more linguistically conservative than British English.

The Old English word that was used before English borrowed herb from French was wort.

Further Reading

The Etymologican: A circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language (Mark Forsyth, 2012)