I have a big dilemma. Throughout this blog so far, you'll have noticed I've talked quite a lot about Gent...but is it Gent? Or should it be Ghent? This is obviously a serious issue worthy of some lengthy research and some in-depth analysis...!
Unfortunately, it turns out that there's not a great deal of research to be done - it's simply the case that Gent is the Dutch name for the city whilst Ghent is the English, in much the same way that Bombay was (until 1995) the English version of Mumbai. For language fans, the French for Gent (or Ghent) is Gand and the English version used to be Gaunt - you may have heard of John of Gaunt (born, of course, in Gent in 1340) who was the Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of Edward III and cropped up in Shakespeare's Richard II.
All of which means that technically, I suppose I ought to be talking about Ghent, at least until my Dutch improves significantly but as a fan of languages in general, this doesn't sit very comfortably so for the time being, I'm afraid that you're stuck with Gent!
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Ghent has definitely got and h - everyone knows that. Problem solved, now you can get on with making our cakes for this Wed ;-)
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