Do you
remeber your first French classes? When you were struggling for a decent
pronunciation and rules of grammar, though, not easy, seemed not that
complicated at all. That were probably the happiest moments.... times when one
starts discovering a language. It is like falling in love. We have passion and
motivation. And it goes well, we conquer...we are kings of the hill.
It comes with hours of learning, we
realise it is not that easy. It is not a walk in the park. We need a lot of
preserverance and hard work to learn a language properly (not mentioning
fluently). And there come to light all the nuances that earlier seemed not
existing or not that significant.
Today I would like to write few words
exactly about such kind of problem. As we know it from the start we do not
pronounce “h” in French. But at the beginning we do not distinguish the two
types of “h” that do exist in that language. To those disbelivig....yes, yes we
have exactly two of them!!! Grammatically speaking.
Before we
continue let me just remaind you the basic terms of the french grammar – liaison and élision. The
first, describes the way we link the words. The one that goes in the second
place and begins with vowel or “h” , is linked withe the enging of the previous
one.
Example:
Les_hommes
Les_enfant jouent.
The second, élision, – is this “l’” sign that we put
before words starting with vowel or “h”.
Example:
l’homme, l’humanité, l’ami
L’espagnole n’est pas si facile.
That leads
us to the main problem stated here. Two types of “h” and two dissimilar ways to
applay them correctly.
H muet –
we do not pronounce it, but we apply liaison and élision.
H aspiré –
we neither pronounce it nor apply
liaison and élision.
Mamam, je veux un hamster! Le hamster é tout
petit...Achète-moi un, s’il te plaît!
Few words with “h
aspiré”
Le hamster - hamster
Le haricot - bean
Le hibou - owl
La haine – hatred/hate
La harpe - harp
Le hérisson - hedgehog
P.S. We have also some other words in Franch that do not require élision. The bad news is, you must learn it by heart. As they are not
distinguished by any particular feature. At the same time, the good news is,
the are marked in the good dictionaries, so you can check it.
