Aspirated h
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In French spelling, aspirated "h" ( French: ''h aspiré'') is an initial
silent letter In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign , which resembles the ...
that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word's first
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
and the preceding word's last vowel. At the same time, the aspirated ''h'' stops the normal processes of contraction and liaison from occurring. The name of the now-silent ''h'' refers not to a contemporary aspiration but to its former pronunciation as the
voiceless glottal fricative The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition or the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the ...
in
Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
and in Middle French.


Examples

This example illustrates how the aspirated ''h''-word ''héros'' prevents the liaison, in which the otherwise-silent word-final consonant would be pronounced before the first vowel of the following word. Because the ''h'' is an aspirated ''h'', the second entry is incorrect, as the hiatus prevents the final from being phonetically realised. The pronunciation /no.ze.ʁo/ would be understood as meaning ''nos zéros'' (our zeroes), something totally different. This example illustrates how the aspirated-''h'' word ''hibou'' has no elision, in which the vowel of the ''le'' would be dropped. The second entry is incorrect because elision is not allowed in the word ''hibou'' because of the hiatus imposed by its aspirated ''h''.


Historical and sociolinguistic aspects

One part of the major phonological changes between Latin and Early Old French was the loss of the consonant , which would later return with the introduction of Germanic words into the language. The aspirate ''h'' ceased to be pronounced once more in either the 16th or the 17th century, but some grammarians kept insisting for it be pronounced into the early part of the twentieth century. Since the phonological behavior of aspirate ''h'' words cannot be predicted through spelling, usage requires a considerable amount of memorisation. It is often used to demonstrate one's education and social status. As early as the 17th century, noted grammarian Claude Favre de Vaugelas described the incorrect pronunciation of aspirated ''h'' words as typical of French spoken on the southern side of the Loire. Further discussion of the phenomenon is found in almost every collection of remarks on language to the present day, with mistakes generally being ascribed to class differences or inattention. In modern usage, the blocking of liaison and
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run to ...
with aspirated ''h'' words appears to be gaining ground in formal French but is losing ground in less guarded speech.


List of French words which begin with an aspirated ''h''

The following list contains only the dictionary head entries and not all the forms that can be derived from them. For example, it does not contain past participles or transitive verbs when used as adjectives or nouns. It does not include composite words unless the omission might cause confusion among homonyms distinguished only by diacritic signs. * In all French words that begin with ''h'', the following letter is a vowel. * Most aspirated-''h'' words are derived from
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...
. * The ''h'' is generally not aspirated in words of Latin and Greek origin. * The ''h'' is aspirated in
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...
. * There are numerous exceptions, and etymology often cannot explain them satisfactorily. In French dictionaries, words with an initial aspirated ''h'' are traditionally prefixed with an
asterisk The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...
but with no effect on their alphabetical arrangement. The following list is compiled from the ''Dictionnaire du Trésor de la langue française'' and the ''Dictionnaire de l'Académie française''. It lacks many proper names and recent borrowings. In general, if a borrowed word is pronounced with an in its language of origin, the ''h'' will be conserved in French orthography and be aspirated.


Words beginning with ''ha''


Words beginning with ''he''


Hélas

''Hélas'' is not aspirated in classical poetry. * ''Hélas ! Que cet hélas a de peine à sortir'' (
Pierre Corneille Pierre Corneille (; ; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great 17th-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronage ...
). That is indicated here by the use of ''cet'' rather than ''ce''.


Words beginning with ''hi''

The aspiration of ''h'' is often optional in words beginning with ''hi'', and the liaison (with a mute ''h'') is generally accepted, except in recent anglicisms of current usage, interjections or homophones with another word. Beside the very productive and learned Greek root ''hiéro-'', most words are quite recent and of Germanic origin ( German, Dutch, Modern English), or the ''h'' is lightly pronounced.


Words beginning with ''ho''

Most have an aspirated ''h''. The exceptions are mostly Latin roots that are most widely used in which the ''h'' has lost its voicing through assimilation to common language (in ''hôte'', ''hospice'' or ''hôpital'' all derived from ''hospes''/''hospitis''. Also if the ''h'' has been assimilated to the following ⟨s⟩ ''heure''/''horo-'', taken from ''hora'' in which the ''h'' has been assimilated to the preceding adjectives, make the ''h'' mute.


Words beginning with ''hu''

Almost all words beginning with ''hu'' have an aspirated ''h''. The exceptions are some terms for which the ''h'' is not etymological but was introduced for orthographic reasons with the purpose of distinguishing different roots that begin with a ''u'' or a ''v'' but were homographs in Latin writing (therefore, ''huile'', ''huis'', or ''huître'' are not aspirated).


See also

*
Hiatus (linguistics) In phonology, hiatus ( ) or diaeresis ( ; also spelled dieresis or diæresis) describes the occurrence of two separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables with no intervening consonant. When two vowel sounds instead occur together as part of a si ...
*
Sandhi Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function o ...


References

{{Reflist French phonology Phonology