FlexiLingoIn one line
his never pronounced in French — but an aspiratedhbehaves like a consonant and blocks elision and liaison.
Ignore the name. "Aspirated" suggests the breathy English
hin hat. It is not pronounced at all. French has no /h/ sound anywhere —l'hommeis /lɔm/,le hérosis /lə e.ʁo/, and neither has a breath in it. The difference between the two kinds ofhis entirely about what happens to the word before it.
The forms on this page
| Form | Means | Sound |
|---|---|---|
h | the letter is named /aʃ/, but it has no sound of its own | /aʃ/ |
The table
silent h — h muet | aspirated h — h aspiré | |
|---|---|---|
| Is it pronounced? | no | no |
| Does elision happen? | yes | no |
| Does liaison happen? | yes | no |
| Example | l'homme /lɔm/ | le héros /lə e.ʁo/ |
| Plural | les hommes /le.z‿ɔm/ | les héros /le e.ʁo/ |
Nothing in the spelling tells the two apart. It has to be memorised with the word — like gender.
In dictionaries an aspirated
his marked with an asterisk or an apostrophe:*hérosor'héros.
Common words with an aspirated h
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
le haricot | bean | /lə a.ʁi.ko/ |
le héros | hero | /lə e.ʁo/ |
la haine | hatred | /la ɛn/ |
le hasard | chance | /lə a.zaʁ/ |
la hauteur | height | /la o.tœʁ/ |
le haut | the top | /lə o/ |
la honte | shame | /la ɔ̃t/ |
le hockey | hockey | /lə ɔ.kɛ/ |
le homard | lobster | /lə ɔ.maʁ/ |
la Hollande | Holland | /la ɔ.lɑ̃d/ |
le hall | hall, lobby | /lə ol/ |
le hamburger | hamburger | /lə ɑ̃.bəʁ.ɡœʁ/ |
le handicap | disability | /lə ɑ̃.di.kap/ |
la hanche | hip | /la ɑ̃ʃ/ |
le hibou | owl | /lə i.bu/ |
la hiérarchie | hierarchy | /la je.ʁaʁ.ʃi/ |
le hobby | hobby | /lə ɔ.bi/ |
le hors-d'œuvre | starter | /lə ɔʁ.dœvʁ/ |
la housse | cover | /la us/ |
hurler | to yell | /yʁ.le/ |
Common words with a silent h
| Word | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
l'homme | man | /lɔm/ |
l'heure | hour | /œʁ/ |
l'hôtel | hotel | /o.tɛl/ |
l'hôpital | hospital | /o.pi.tal/ |
l'histoire | history, story | /is.twaʁ/ |
l'hiver | winter | /li.vɛʁ/ |
l'habitude | habit | /la.bi.tyd/ |
l'herbe | grass | /ɛʁb/ |
l'huile | oil | /ɥil/ |
l'humeur | mood | /y.mœʁ/ |
l'honneur | honour | /lɔ.nœʁ/ |
l'horaire | timetable | /ɔ.ʁɛʁ/ |
héroïne(heroine) has a silentheven thoughhérosis aspirated. That is a genuine exception and must be learnt separately:l'héroïnebutle héros.
A rough signal — where the word came from
| Origin | Kind of h | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Latin and Greek | silent — homme heure histoire | /ɔm/ · /œʁ/ · /is.twaʁ/ |
| Germanic, English, Arabic | aspirated — haricot hockey hasard | /a.ʁi.ko/ · /ɔ.kɛ/ · /a.zaʁ/ |
The reason is that Latin had lost its /h/ centuries earlier, so Latin words entered French with a purely written h. Germanic and Arabic words brought a real /h/ with them, and although the sound later disappeared too, the consonant-like behaviour stayed.
This test is unusually reliable if you speak English, because you can run it from your own vocabulary. If the French word looks like a plain Germanic English word — hall, hockey, hobby, hamburger, handicap, harbour — the
his aspirated. If it looks like a Latinate English word — hotel, hour, history, honour, habit, hospital, humour — thehis silent. And those Latinate ones are precisely the English words where thehis silent or wobbly in English too: an hour, an honest man, an herb in American English.
The rule holds about 80 per cent of the time — not enough on its own, but useful.
What difference it actually makes
silent h | aspirated h | |
|---|---|---|
| article | l'hôtel /o.tɛl/ | le haricot |
| plural | les hôtels /le.z‿o.tɛl/ | les haricots /le a.ʁi.ko/ |
| possessive | mon habitude /mɔ̃.n‿a.bi.tyd/ | ma haine |
| adjective | un bel homme /œ̃ bɛl ɔm/ | un beau haricot |
| demonstrative | cet hôtel /sɛ.t‿o.tɛl/ | ce haricot |
| negative | Je n'hésite pas. /ʒə ne.zit pa/ | Je ne hurle pas. /ʒə nə yʁl pa/ |
ma haine, notmon haine— because an aspiratedhcounts as a consonant, so the feminine possessive stays as it is.
In today's speech the line is blurring
Younger speakers often make the liaison with an aspirated h anyway:
les haricots/le.z‿a.ʁi.ko/ — common in speech, wrong in an exam
The Académie does not accept it, and it must be observed in writing and in formal speech.
Examples
| English | French | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| The man. | L'homme. | /lɔm/ |
| The bean. | Le haricot. | /lə a.ʁi.ko/ |
| What time is it? | Quelle heure est-il ? | /kɛ.l‿œ.ʁ‿ɛ.t‿il/ |
| The heroes. | Les héros. | /le e.ʁo/ |
| The men. | Les hommes. | /le.z‿ɔm/ |
| The hotel. | L'hôtel. | /lo.tɛl/ |
| Upstairs. | En haut. | /ɑ̃ o/ |
| A handsome man. | Un bel homme. | /œ̃ bɛ.l‿ɔm/ |
| My hatred. | Ma haine. | /ma ɛn/ |
| My habit. | Mon habitude. | /mɔ̃.n‿a.bi.tyd/ |
Common mistakes
| ❌ | ✅ | Why |
|---|---|---|
l'haricot | le haricot | An aspirated h blocks elision |
les haricots with a liaison | without the liaison | The same |
le homme | l'homme | A silent h allows elision |
mon haine | ma haine | An aspirated h counts as a consonant |
pronouncing the h | it never has a sound | Not even the aspirated one |
l'héros | le héros | But l'héroïne is correct |
Why a letter with no sound matters so much
a dead sound whose behaviour survived it
In Classical Latin h had a sound — a light breath, like the English h.
But it had dropped out of speech by the first century AD. Romans could not hear the difference between honor and onor, and their poets made jokes about it.
So Latin words entering French had a silent h — a purely orthographic letter.
Then a second wave arrived: Germanic words from the Franks and Arabic words through Spain and trade — and these brought a real /h/ sound with them.
| Word | From |
|---|---|
haricot /a.ʁi.ko/ | probably Germanic, via the Old French verb harigoter ("to cut into pieces") |
hasard /a.zaʁ/ | Arabic az-zahr |
haine /ɛn/ | Frankish |
hache /aʃ/ | Frankish — happja |
That sound was gone by the sixteenth century too — but by then the language had learnt that these words behave "like consonants", and the behaviour outlived the sound.
So the aspirated h is a dead sound with only its shadow left: it blocks elision and liaison without ever being heard.
English preserves one small piece of the same history. You say "an hour" but "a house" — English also treats one set of h words as vowel-initial and another as consonant-initial, for the same reason: Latin words arrived with a silent h, Germanic words with a real one. French l'heure versus le haricot is English "an hour" versus "a house", one layer deeper.
The practical point: the list is short — about a hundred words, of which perhaps twenty are genuinely frequent. Memorise those with their article: le haricot, le héros, la honte, le hasard. Learn the rest as you meet them.