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In French phonology and orthography, aspirated h (French: h aspiré) is used to refer to words that begin with a vowel sound, but do not allow elision and liaison when they follow another word. Such words are usually spelled with an initial letter "h". For example:

hache "axe" – la hache [laaʃ] "the axe", les haches [leaʃ] "the axes"

Other words spelled with "h" do require elision and liaison. For example:

heure "hour" – l'heure [lœʁ] "the hour, les heures [lezœʁ] "the hours"

Such words are said to begin with a mute h (French: h muet).

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), nor does include composite words, except in cases where the omission might cause confusion among homonyms distinguished only by diacritic signs.

• In all French words that begin with the letter "h", the following letter is invariably a vowel.
• Among the rare words that use a "y" after an initial "h", none has an aspirated h. Likewise, "h" is rarely aspirated before a following "i".
• For the other vowels, the "h" is often aspirated, except for those coming from the oldest Greek language roots.
• The aspirated h is most often conserved in either Latin language roots or in recent borrowed words.
• In all interjections and in words taken from the cries of animals or produced by objects, the "h" is aspirated.

In French dictionaries, words with an initial aspirated "h" are traditionally prefixed with an asterisk 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 [h] in its language of origin, the "h" will be conserved in French orthography, and it will be aspirated.

Words beginning with ha-

Words beginning with he-

The "h" in the word Hélas is not aspirated in classical poetry.

• Hélas ! Que cet hélas a de peine à sortir. Corneille.

Words beginning with hi-

The aspiration of h nowadays is often optional in words beginning with hi- shown here, and the liaison (with a mute h) is generally accepted, except in those recent anglicisms of current usage, in interjections, or in the case of homophones with another word. In this list, beside the very productive and learned Greek root hiéro-, the majority of words are quite recent and of Germanic origin (German, Dutch, Modern English), or the h is lightly pronounced, or are recent and learned borrowings from more distant languages.

Words beginning with ho-

The majority of words starting with ho- have an aspirated h. The exceptions concern mostly

• those Latin roots which are most widely used in which the h has lost its voicing through assimilation to common language (in hôte, hospice or hôpital all dervied from hospes/hospitis,
• cases in which the h has been assimilated to the following s; or the case of heure/horo-, taken from hora, in which the h has been assimilated to the preceding adjectives)
• cases of confusion among various roots (for example homme derived from the Latin root homo, which is in conflict with the form derived from the non-aspirated Greek root homo.)

Words beginning with hu-

Almost all the words beginning with hu- have an aspirated h. The exceptions in this list concern

• 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 which were homographs in ancient Latin writing (therefore, huile, huis, or huître are not aspirated)
• or cases in which the vowel has changed because of similarity with the Latin root (humanus after homo) which is not aspirated.

References

See also

• Hiatus (linguistics)
• Sandhi