Linguist Forum

Specializations => Phonetics and Phonology => Topic started by: katie333 on January 31, 2014, 11:32:46 AM

Title: comparing h to h
Post by: katie333 on January 31, 2014, 11:32:46 AM

So I am curious thinking about this praat utility:
In comparing h in english to h in french.
How would an h in english show up?  A french h can be aspirated but is more likely to be silent

how does it look in english?

are there any resources for general interest but that have more detail that could help?

Title: Re: comparing h to h
Post by: Daniel on January 31, 2014, 11:38:40 AM

You're talking about spelling? That is basically irrelevant. Instead, you should look at the phonemes. In English we have words like "hospital" with H pronounced and others like "herb" (in American English) with the H not pronounced. Silent letters have no effect on the acoustics, obviously.

So if you have a French word with silent H, then it would have no sound. If it has an /h/ phoneme, it would probably sound similar to English (if [h] is an accurate description).

You might find this is a phonological pattern-- between vowels you get an H for example. I'm not sure about French.



In short, spelling and pronunciation do not (necessarily) have anything to do with each other: the phonetic form for "right" will be essentially identical to "write".

Title: Re: comparing h to h
Post by: Corybobory on February 01, 2014, 03:23:28 AM

Yes - you can't compare h to h, but you can compare /h/ to /h/.

Otherwise it would be like looking at the silent 'e' at the end of English words.  It's just orthography, not phonology!