Pronouncing the Spanish H

The letter h may be the easiest of all the Spanish letters to pronounce: With the only exceptions being a very few words of obvious foreign origin and the two-letter combinations explained next, the h is always silent. In Combinations and Alone The letter combinations ch, which used to be considered a separate letter of the alphabet, and the sh in flash and a few other imported words are pronounced basically the same as in English; however, the usual silence of h doesnt mean its pronunciation doesnt sometimes trip up beginning Spanish students. Those who speak English as a first language often want to pronounce the letter when it is in a cognate, that is, a Spanish word that is more or less the same as English. For example, the h should not be pronounced in words such as vehà ­culo (vehicle), Habana (Havana), Honduras and prohibir (prohibit), as tempting as it may be. Etymology If the h is silent, why does it exist? For reasons of etymology (word history) only. Just as the k in the English know and the b in lamb used to be audible, the Spanish h used to be pronounced ages ago. Almost all Spanish consonants have become softer over the years; the h became so soft as to become inaudible. The Spanish h also was used to separate two vowels that werent pronounced as one, that is as a diphthong. For example, the word for owl used to be spelled as buho to indicate that it was pronounced as two syllables rather than rhyming with the first syllable of cuota or quota. Nowadays, though, an accent is used over a stressed vowel to indicate the lack of a diphthong, so the word is written as bà ºho. In this case, then, the accent isnt used to indicate stress as it usually does, but as a guide to the proper pronunciation of the vowels. Also, these days it is standard for the h between vowels to be ignored in pronunciation; that is, the vowels sometimes run together despite the h between them, depending on how they are stressed. For example, prohibir is pronounced more or less the same as proibir would be. Note, though, that when the stress is on the second syllable in forms of this word, it is accented and pronounced clearly. Thus conjugated forms of the verb include prohà ­bes, prohà ­be, and prohà ­ben. Also, this is why bà ºho (owl) is  spelled with an accent mark. The accent assures that this word is pronounced as bà ºo  rather than buo. Similarly, alcohol is pronounced as alcol, not as alco-ol with a brief pause (known as a glottal stop) between the o and o.   Exceptions The words where the h is pronounced? Apparently, the only such word that is recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy as fully Spanish is hà ¡mster, a cognate of the English word for hamster, although it came to Spanish by way of German. It is pronounced much as it is in German or English as if it were spelled jà ¡mster. Other imported words, listed by the Academy as foreign or not listed at all, in which native speakers often pronounce the h include hockey (not to be confused with jockey), hobby (plural usually hobbys), Hong Kong (and some other place names), hacker and hit (baseball term or a major success). Also, jalar and halar (to pull) are often used synonymously, and in some regions, it is common to pronounce jalar even while writing halar.