The Fricative Consonant /h/ The place of articulation of this consonant is glottal. This means that the narrowing that produces the friction noise is between the vocal cords. If you breath out silently, then produce, /h/ you are moving your vocal cords from wide apart to close together, however, this is not producing speech. When we produce /h/ in speaking English, many different things happen in different contexts. In the word hat the /h/ must be followed by an /æ/ vowel. The tongue, jaw and lip positions for the vowel are all produced simultaneously with the /h/ consonant, so that the glottal fricative has an /æ/quality. The same is found for all vowels following /h/; it always has the quality of the vowel it precedes. It could be useful to keep in mind the following two questions before going in the explanation and description of /h/ sound, the questions are: 1- Justify the reason behind the fact that there are as many /h/ as vowels. 2- Justify the reason behind the fact that /h/ sound is classified with consonants rather than vowels in spite of the slight obstruction to air flow during its production. Phonologically, /h/ is a consonant. It is usually found before vowels. As well as being found in initial position it is found medially in words such as ahead /əhed/ , greenhouse /gri:nhaus/, boathook /bəuthuk/. It is noticeable that when /h/ occurs between voiced sounds (as in the words ahead and greenhouse), it is pronounced with voicing – not normal voicing of vowels but a weak, slightly fricative sound called breathy voice. It is not helpful or even possible to produce a description of the vocal cord during the production of the /h/ sound. Because there are as many /h/ sounds as there are vowels. /h/ always occurs before a vowel and consists of the sound of breath passing between the open vocal cord and out of the mouth which is already prepared for the following vowel. Before /i:/ the mouth is in position for /i:/, before /o/ the mouth is in position for /o/ and so on. So in order to make /h/ sound the mouth is ready for the following vowel and a short gasp of breath is pushed up by the lungs. /h/ sound does not make very much noise, but it must not be left out when it should be sounded for two reasons: 1- many words are distinguished by the presence or absence of /h/ , like for example here /hiə/ and ear /iə/. 2- English speakers consider that the leaving out of /h/ is the mark of an uncultivated speaker.
Examples of words containing /h/: Heart /ha:t/ her /hз:/ hat /hæt/ Hall /ho:l/ who /hu:/ hi / hi:/ Other examples : Harm /ha:m/ arm /a:m/ heat /hi:t/ eat /i:t/ Hedge /hed3/ edge /ed3/ hall /ho:t/ all /o:l/ Hair /heə/ air /eə/ hill /hil/ ill /il/
/h/ also occurs in the middle of words (although never at the end of words) and should be made in the same way as before, e.g.
Behind /hehaind/ rehears /rihз:s/ re-house /rei:hauz/ Anyhow /enihau/ key-hole /ki:h əul/ unholy /Λnhəuli/ Alcolol /ælkehol/ beforehand /bifo:hænd/