Talk:Aspirated h

Phonology?

Why is this article listed under the Phonology section in the French series? I see absolutely nothing in here discussing the actual realisation of <h> by native French speakers asides the first few brief introductory lines. The rest is just a dictionary list of words beginning with h-, which in my opinion is not of much relevance (are you talking about the aspirated h or the letter h?).

If you're aiming for phonology, then the article should explain why in modern Standard French, certain words such as hibou don't allow liaison (le hibou /lə.i.bu/); that is, a more historical explanation of the realisation of the hiatus in the French language. Moreover, it should compare the Standard to actual spoken French, and to various dialects. For example, it's not uncommon for the hiatus to disappear, so le hibou becomes /li.bu/. Other dialects may actually retain the aspirated consonant as /lə.hi.bu/, which contrasts in minimal pairs such as eau /o/ and haut /ho/. Other realisations of /h/ may include [ɦ] or [x] depending on the dialect. - Io Katai (talk) 01:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Currently most of the article is translated from Wikipédia, as the banner at the top of this page indicates. I started to update it, but it needs a lot of work, hopefully from many interested editors. Aspirated "h" has both orthographic and phonological aspects, so (1) people will expect to see some list of words beginning with the letter "h" (but not necessarily this gigantic, unencyclopedic list), (2) you are very welcome to contribute information about phonetic realization and phonological analysis (although I would suggest concentrating on Standard French before going into regional and social variation), and (3) it doesn't make much difference (to me) if the article is listed under "Orthography" or "Phonology" in Template:French language. CapnPrep (talk) 11:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Aspiration for avoiding a glottal stop

Since in German we speak a glottal stop in front of words starting with vowels, it’s hard to rid oneself of that habit in English, so some accent reduction trainers recommend speaking a very little—if possible silent—“h” in front of such words. That might be interesting in this context, but I don’t see how it could fit in with the current article. – Telofy (talk) 16:42, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Orthography

Has there ever been talk of removing the unaspirated ‹h›es from the orthography to make it more consistent? The unaspirated ‹h› serves no purpose that I know. Though ludicrously complex, French orthography is more-or-less consistent. Then there's the presence of the silent ‹h›es in the much-simpler Spanish orthography... don't even get me started on English. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Languages don't really work that way.

"Today the Government of Canada declared that the unaspirated 'h' no longer exists."

In Spanish, you see signage all the time where their silent h's have been dropped.

I think French orthography is more 'ludicrous' than English. But in both cases, there is preservation of sounds pronounced historically, which also, not coincidentally, indicates connections to other languages. The French circumflex is entirely about historical pronunciation and links to Latin.

Polish does the same thing with its common 'rz'. It's pronounced ʒ but cognates in other languages have 'r', so Polish combines 'r' with 'z' since z, in the form ż, is pronounced ʒ in Polish. It can seem irrational but it's not. There's simply a lack of education regarding these spelling anomalies.

'Knight' is phonetic if you go back far enough, and its connection to German 'Knecht' is pretty clear.

Varlaam (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Wrong Project?

Shouldn't this be in a French Appendix in Wiktionary instead? I doubt that Wikipedia is the place for such tables. Anivisual (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Glottal stop?

Can an h aspiré really be pronounced with a glottal stop? A glottal stop is, after all, quite hard a consonant if you think of it, and sounds certainly un-French to me (though I'm German). A real h, with very weak intonation, sounds possible to me or at least better then a glottal stop. --91.34.219.10 (talk) 10:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

In English, we use a weak type of glottal stop when two vowels collide. It's not an Arabic hamza, or something like that. I can imagine French doing the same.

I will have to listen to my goddaughter. Varlaam (talk) 17:23, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Translation required

The tables are still in French to some extent with « (n. propre f.) » and « (adj. ou n. m.) ».
Varlaam (talk) 17:44, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The diachronic explanations...

... are messy and apparently half-nonsensical. Something simpler, e.g. 'mute mainly in the words inherited from Latin etc., aspirated mainly in Frankish loanwords etc.', would be better. 89.231.112.93 (talk) 00:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Article needs work

There is an extensive linguistics literature on h aspiré: Robert Hall, 1948; Jakobson and Lotz, Sound Shape of Language 1949; N.C.W. Spence, "French ‘mute e’: The basic difficulties"; Elisabeth O. Selkirk and Jean-Roger Vergnaud, "How Abstract Is French Phonology?"; etc. etc. This should be covered in this article. --Macrakis (talk) 17:56, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

what about french words used in other languages?

I can't find anything in the article about the affected pronunciation of the aspirate by (e.g.) english speakers using a word of french origin such as "hotel". I've witnessed both "a hotel" & "an otel" in colloquial english speech; is this area not worth of a mention, or is it sitting somewhere else in WP, in whcih case should it not be linked from here?

duncanrmi (talk) 11:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

What happened to the transwiki to Wiktionary?

It's more than two years since someone tagged the word lists as being on the verge of transfer to Wiktionary. Did that ever happen? When I saw the lists, before I noticed the tag it occurred to me that they were more fodder for a dictionary than an encyclopedia, just as lists of French words ending in "-er" where the "r" is pronounced and French words with "ill" where the "ll" is pronounced as /l/ would be. Largoplazo (talk) 03:00, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @Some Gadget Geek:, who posted the tag. Largoplazo (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

What about words that are treated to have an aspirated h despite not being spelled with h?

There are also some words that are not spelled with an initial h, but are treated as if they have an aspirated h regardless, such as "oui", "onze", "yaourt", etc, but this article does not mention them at all. Andersyu31415 (talk) 15:32, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

A word like "onze" isn't treated "as if" it has aspirated "h". It's just that words with aspirated "h" aren't the only ones beginning with a vowel sound that are treated that way. Also, why would "oui" and "yaourt" be relevant at all? They begin with consonants, /w/ and /j/, respectively. Similarly, "la ouate", "le watt", "le ouistiti", "le whiskey", "le yoga", "la Yougoslavie". Largoplazo (talk) 16:12, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. I think "onze" is indeed a very important and interesting exceptional case. Despite being spelled with initial <o> or <y>, the words 'ouate', 'oui', 'yoga', etc. all begin with consonant phonemes (/w/ or /j/) in any phonological analysis of the French language. The word "onze" is neither spelled with an initial <h>, nor does it begin with an initial consonant phoneme. It is thus quite an interesting and unique case. —Moxfyre (ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 02:12, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

If the article were titled "French words that begin with vowel sounds but are preceded by 'le' or 'la'", then "onze" would be on-topic. However, as interesting as it is that "onze" is preceded by "le" in the same manner as words that begin with aspirated "h", it isn't a word that begins with aspirated "h", so in this article it's off-topic. Largoplazo (talk) 03:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I think the OP is referring to words that the liaison is not allowed, like onze and un (as a number) and is mistaken about grouping them with an aspirated "h". LeoDaVinci (talk) 17:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Missing Information

The sentence: "Before other vowels, the h is often aspirated, except for those coming from the oldest Greek roots." in the section List of French words which begin with an aspirated h fails to refer to what were the first vowels that this sentence refers to. In my limited search through the history, I didn't see a sentence that had been erased that would have preceded this. Any clarification? LeoDaVinci (talk) 17:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)