# What is the purpose of the letter H in Spanish?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 11, 2005, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264 "2005-01-11T19:56:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Fox\_Paws](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fox_Paws)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/1 "2005-01-11T19:56:21Z")
Just what the title suggests: Why does the Spanish language have an H? It isn’t needed to pronounce hablo, or hora, or zanahoria, or hacer, etc. It is, in every situation I can think of, silent. What is its role?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/2 "2005-01-11T20:06:21Z")
Unlike English, Spanish has several two-letter consonants. My Spanish-English dictionary defines “ch” as a consonant, as in the words chato, chaleco and mucho. Other two letter consonants in Spanish are “ll” and “rr”.
They could use one letter to cover, as English sometimes uses “s” as “sh”. But while it’s not strictly true that all consonants in Spanish are “pronounced the way they sound” or have only one pronunciation, as is sometimes said reductionistically about the language, it’s closer to true than in English. Without the “ch” construction there would be confusion about the pronunciation of a “c” in those words.
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### Author:  [@BarnOwl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarnOwl)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/3 "2005-01-11T20:08:50Z")
It’s needed for words such as chico, cachita, macho, etc.
We don’t pronounce the h in hour, either, but Santa sure needs it for his “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and so on.
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### Author:  [@Fox\_Paws](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fox_Paws)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/4 "2005-01-11T20:24:56Z")
> [@Antiochus](#):
>
> We don’t pronounce the h in hour, either, but Santa sure needs it for his “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and so on.
Well, yeah, but English is screwed up. I stopped asking “Why does English do [something] this way?” questions a long time ago. Spanish makes way more sense to me than does English.
As for “ch,” I should have been more clear. I understand the H is needed there. It’s the standalone Hs that cornfuse me.
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### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/5 "2005-01-11T20:46:32Z")
The Iberian Romance languages _did_ at some point have phonetically functional “h”-es, which evolved into silence but that in writing remained useful place-markers. A freestanding h is usually a legacy from the origin-word, which may started out as Latin, Greek, Visigothic, Arabic, Italian, Nahuatl, Quechua, Tagalog, French, English, etc., and either already had an h or an _eta_ in it, or had a phonetic structure that according to the rules of Spanish grammar _in effect at the time when the word was introduced_ required an “h” to be put there.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2005, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/6 "2005-01-11T20:49:26Z")
The H is not always totally silent – it represents what’s either a thing called an “open juncture” or a glottal stop, depending on dialect, in words like “ahora” – pronounced “ah’-OR-ah.” (Open junctures are the miniscule pauses between sounds that a native speaker makes instinctively, to avoid diphthongization or to distinguish morphemes, as in “zoology” (which is ZOE-ahl-a-gy not ZOO-lidgy) or the distinction in the spoken “a nice cream dish” versus “an ice cream dish.”)
A substantial minority of the initial H’s in Spanish are silent but present to represent derivation from Latin words beginning in F-, much like English “knight” and “psychology” preserve silent initial letters to indicate derivation. One that comes quickly to mind is _hierro_, Iron, from Latin _ferrum_ (root _ferro-_).
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/7 "2005-01-12T02:27:07Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> A substantial minority of the initial H’s in Spanish are silent but present to represent derivation from Latin words beginning in F-, much like English “knight” and “psychology” preserve silent initial letters to indicate derivation. One that comes quickly to mind is _hierro_, Iron, from Latin _ferrum_ (root _ferro-_).
Beat me to it. Other examples:
_formica - hormiga_ (ant)
_farina - harina_ (flour)
_fornus - horno_ (oven)
_fungus - hongo_ (mushroom)
In all these cases the Italian version of the word retains the F.
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### Author:  [@Doobieous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doobieous)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/8 "2005-01-12T02:40:37Z")
There are some dialects (i’ve read that Philippine Spanish is one) that preserves the h sound in words that in Old Spanish had an f:
hormiga
hierro
hongo
etc.
Part of the reason it is kept in words where it’s not needed is etymology sake.
To the one who said “English is screwed up” that’s a value judgement you can’t substantiate. If you take a look at Spanish, it’s got quite a few loans and words that have been nativized but were from other language (This even goes back to the Vulgar Latin stage)
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### Author:  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/9 "2005-01-12T03:48:22Z")
> [@Doobieous](#):
>
> …the Vulgar Latin stage
This was when the plebeians would stand on the street corners and lift their tunics at passersby, right?
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/10 "2005-01-12T03:49:43Z")
> [@jayjay](#):
>
> This was when the plebeians would stand on the street corners and lift their tunics at passersby, right?
Oh, much more vulgar than that! I’d give you a link, but the Mods. would come along and delete it, with a warning! 😉
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/11 "2005-01-12T05:36:32Z")
Here’s one theory, that confirms a lot of what was said in this thread (and it talks about the theory that the switch from Latin F to Spanish H was due to the Basques, who had an “H” sound, but not an “F” sound. It also suggests another theory, which is that, in Spain, Latin “F” kept it’s older /phi/ articulation, and that the language was then modified by contact with French and Provincal speakers). That “h” became silent seems to have been a quirk of Castillian by the 15th and 16th centuries.
[http://www.jvaladez.com/sancha/initialf.html](http://www.jvaladez.com/sancha/initialf.html)
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### Author:  [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/12 "2005-01-12T07:19:09Z")
😉
**"k" does in kniz**
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### Author:  [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/13 "2005-01-12T11:19:32Z")
Also an H can change the meaning of a word, as in Hola / ola, (hello / wave), hora / ora (hour / pray), etc… ; that´s only for written language, those words are pronounced the same.
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### Author:  [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/14 "2005-01-12T14:45:11Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> The H is not always totally silent – it represents what’s either a thing called an “open juncture” or a glottal stop, depending on dialect, in words like “ahora” – pronounced “ah’-OR-ah.” (Open junctures are the miniscule pauses between sounds that a native speaker makes instinctively, to avoid diphthongization or to distinguish morphemes, as in “zoology” (which is ZOE-ahl-a-gy not ZOO-lidgy) or the distinction in the spoken “a nice cream dish” versus “an ice cream dish.”)
Are you sure about that? I’ve never heard that in any of my Spanish phonetics or linguistics classes, and my own experience doesn’t really bear it out. “Ahora” couldn’t turn into /'ao ra/ because “ao” is an impossible diphthong in Spanish anyway. I could buy that the H serves as an orthographic cue to indicate that two syllables are separate (which is actually one of the few ways that the Spanish orthography isn’t regular) but I just haven’t seen that to be the case.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/15 "2005-01-12T18:45:59Z")
Even if the letter “h” is silent in Spanish, I don’t see what the problem is. Lots of languages have silent letters. You could ask the same question about “h” in French, or “alef” in Hebrew. They have their purposes. In Hebrew, one purpose of alef is to allow words to begin with vowel sounds. Also, they exist for historical reasons. In some cases they used to be pronounced.
Ed
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/16 "2005-01-12T19:16:15Z")
> [@suranyi](#):
>
> Even if the letter “h” is silent in Spanish, I don’t see what the problem is.
Not so much a problem, but an anomaly. Spanish orthography otherwise very closely follows pronunciation. Having a silent letter is very unusual in Spanish, whereas it is extremely common in French or English.
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### Author:  [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/17 "2005-01-12T22:53:23Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#):
>
> Unlike English, Spanish has several two-letter consonants. My Spanish-English dictionary defines “ch” as a consonant, as in the words chato, chaleco and mucho. Other two letter consonants in Spanish are “ll” and “rr”.
Hijack on this… from what I’ve seen, “ **Ch, Ll, and Rr** ” are no longer considered [separate consonants:](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/spanishdictionary/pronunciation.html)
> [@](#):
>
> **ch** is no longer considered to be a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet. However, it represents a single sound, which is similar to the English ch in church and cheek
>
> \*\* ll \*\* is no longer considered to be a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet. However, it does represent a single sound, which differs widely in pronunciation throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
It doesn’t address **rr** specifically, but I believe that to be true as well.
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### Author:  [@The\_Controvert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Controvert)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2005, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/18 "2005-01-12T23:14:02Z")
What I wanna know is why they use the letter J in place of the letter H?
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### Author:  [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2005, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/19 "2005-01-13T14:24:01Z")
> [@The Controvert](#):
>
> What I wanna know is why they use the letter J in place of the letter H?
Assuming it’s a serious question, it has to do with the evolution of fricatives in Spanish. First note that “h” in Latin had the same sound as in Modern English, but by the time of the Roman Empire at least, the “h” was only retained by the nobility, who were taught a Latin based on that of earlier times. During this time, initial "h"s tended to appear and disappear; many words got them added on even when there was no historical basis for it, and as time went on and literacy in Classical Latin declined, it got worse. So by the time of Romance, the post-Latin ancestor of all the modern Romance Languages, the “H” had no phonetic value.
“I” was used as both consonant and vowel in Latin, but consonantal uses of it later were distinguished with a tail, creating the letter “j”. Consonantal “i” originally sounded like “y” as in “yes”, but it turned into a fricative in the Romance Languages (a parallel process has occured much more recently with the “y” and “ll” sounds in the Spanish spoken in parts of South America, notably Argentina).
The Spanish of the Middle Ages had a large set of fricatives and affricates: “j”, which sounded approximately like the French “j”; “x” (like English “sh”); “s” could be either its modern unvoiced sound or /z/; “c”, “z”, and “ç” (/ts/); as well as the other ones still extant. Portuguese has retained all but /ts/, which has turned into /s/ in Portuguese and Latin American Spanish, and a dental fricative (English “th”) in European Spanish.
Since the Middle Ages many of these fricatives have disappeared in Spanish. The “j” and “x” became breathier and turned into the sound /x/, which is like the “ch” in “Channukah”, “Bach”, or “loch”. In Latin America it weakened further until, in most regions, it developed the /h/ sound (as in the English “h”). In European Spanish, the “x” is no longer frequently used to write the /x/ sound, “j” having taken it over, so it’s common to find “Tejas”, “Méjico”, and “Don Quijote”, while the “x” spellings exist elsewhere (and apparently the spelling issue is important in Texas and Mexico.)
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### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-letter-h-in-spanish/284264/20 "2005-01-13T19:26:29Z")
> [@stpauler](#):
>
> Hijack on this… from what I’ve seen, “ **Ch, Ll, and Rr** ” are no longer considered [separate consonants:](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/spanishdictionary/pronunciation.html)
>
> It doesn’t address **rr** specifically, but I believe that to be true as well.
I think additionally ñ is also no longer a separate letter. The Academy did all of this to make data processing in the computer age easier. Most recent dictionaries (and the gazeteer in my Mexican road atlas) \*still[i/] have separate entries and sort orders per tradition, though.
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