AEE 2708: Honestly, You’ll Be Happy About These Pronunciation Tips

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2708. Honestly, you'll be happy about these pronunciation tips. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English?

We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer. coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Do you ever make mistakes when it comes to pronouncing the letter H? Do you leave it off when it should be used or include it when it shouldn't? Today, find out the trick to getting this right every single time.

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Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Hello, Lindsay. How are you today? Hey there, Aubrey.

I'm doing great. How are you? How's everything? Excellent. I have a question for you. All right. When was the last time you were hangry? It happens a lot, to be honest.

An hour ago, 15 minutes ago. Yeah. Over the weekend, we were looking at houses around Denver and I was like, oh, when is this going to be over, right? I'm hungry and I'm angry that I'm hungry.

Usually it's a self-fulfilling problem, right? It's like you're hungry. You become angry because you're hungry and therefore you are hungry. Hangry. Exactly.

This is a fun word, right? This is that blend of hungry and angry. We'll say, well, I'm hangry. Like I'm hungry and it's making me grumpy. And this episode was inspired by this word because one of our students told me about a misunderstanding where she asked someone if they were hangry and they thought she was saying angry because the problem was she was not pronouncing the H. She wasn't pushing air with the H and

This happens a lot. Language learners, if the H is more likely to be silent at the beginning of words in their language, they won't pronounce that H and it can cause misunderstandings. Yes, 100%. Oh my gosh.

And I guess the other meaning for hangry could also be you're independently hungry and independently angry about something else. Just so we're totally clear. Yeah, that's true. of the meaning.

You never know. Yeah, for sure. All right. So let's clear this up then for our listeners' pronunciation today. That's great. I like that we're getting into pronunciation a little bit different for all yours English, right?

Yeah, this is going to be great. And H really is so tricky because some H's are silent in English. So we're going to give three tips to help you with the pronunciation of H so you know a little better when to be pushing air with that ha sound and when not. So I'm excited to dive into this so you guys have some pro tips.

Excellent. Guys, before we dive in, go ahead and hit that follow button right now. We are in the height of the autumn, the fall in the US at least. This is the time to buckle down and focus in on your English.

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Absolutely. All right. Yes. Love that. Wherever you find your podcasts, be sure to hit follow so you don't miss any of our episodes. And let's dive in here, Lindsay.

This is so interesting. Yeah. How do we pronounce H? I mean, let's talk about it a little bit, Aubrey. Can you show us? Yeah. So sometimes it is silent in English.

And then sometimes we have aspiration. So that means a noticeable puff or burst of air that accompanies a sound, right? So we push air and go... And then that airflow just means the actual movement of air through the vocal tract.

So there's not vibrations of the vocal cords, but we're pushing air that can be heard audibly. Okay. If we put our hand up to our mouth, we should kind of feel something coming out, right, Aubrey? So hungry, hangry.

Yes, I can feel that. Yes, right. You should feel air hit your hand if you're doing that. So this H sound is called a voiceless glottal fricative is what it's called for the linguists out there.

But for us, what's important to know is that if we don't push air when we need to, it can sound like a totally different word, like hangry versus angry. Yeah. And it's subtle, but it could cause a misunderstanding. So it's important that you know which words the H should be silent and which words air should be aspirated.

Yeah, this is where it gets a little tricky, right? A little bit nuanced. So what are some of the words where H is actually pronounced at the beginning of the word, Aubrey? Yeah.

So as a general rule, H is pronounced, air is pushed at the beginning of words in English. So for example, happy, home. What are a couple others, Lindsay? Yeah.

The word hope, right? Hope, I can feel that air coming out of my mouth or hungry. Happy, home, hope, hungry. Okay. Yeah. So a sentence with all of those is just for fun.

I'm happy to be home and I hope there's something to eat because I'm hungry. Maybe angry. Yeah, exactly. Great. So that one we are, as we say, aspirating that air.

But there are a few common exceptions, right? Most words in English, you do hear the H. But there are some exceptions. This is what makes it tricky because sometimes you don't. And the most common are honest or honestly.

honor, and what else, Lindsay? Hour, right? So honest, honestly, honor, honorable, right? Hour, hourly. And there are a few others like air, the air to a kingdom, spelled H-E-I-R.

There are a few, but that's about it. There aren't very many. Usually if you see H at the beginning of a word, you're going to push air when you make that sound. Okay.

So just to reiterate for our listeners, 99, 98% of the time you are pushing air for an H at the beginning of a word, right, Aubrey? Exactly. Let's do a fun sentence here with some of these exceptions. You could say, honestly, it was an honor to spend an hour talking with them.

So as you can see, there are a few words where there is a silent H. That's really what makes this tricky. There's not this rule where you can say every time you're going to push air with H. Unfortunately, English doesn't make things that easy on us. Right. And this could be, maybe we could create this into like a series on silent letters or something.

That would be kind of cool because I'm thinking about the silent K that comes in the beginning of a word before the end that is usually silent. But anyways, thinking of new episode ideas. There's so many. It's really tricky.

There's so many. We'll get into it later in the fall. Guys, hit the follow button if that sounds like a good plan to you. So what else do we need to know here?

So our number two tip here is that H is also usually pronounced if it begins a new syllable in the middle of a word. So for example, behind, behave. When I make that H sound, I'm pushing air. You still have to kind of aspirate, push out the air, put your hand in front of your mouth, feel the air.

So behind, behave, inhabit. I have to make that H sound. Inhibit or prohibit. Right. So fun sentence. Behind the house, we have signs that prohibit smoking.

Yeah. And this is tricky, but there are a few exceptions. This is a good pro tip. All of the exceptions begin with EX. So for example, exhibit, exhaust, those have an H after that EX, but it is silent.

It is silent. Exhilarate or exhort. What does exhort mean, Aubrey? I'm not really a... Like to convince, right? I would exhort you to do this means I'm trying to convince you to do something.

It is a pretty rare word. It's not used very common. And here's an example sentence where we can hear that these are silent, right? The museum exhibit was so impressive that it exhilarated visitors but left them exhausted.

Yeah. Yes, love it. And the one exception to this is exhale, which I think it's nice that the meaning of it, you're exhaling air. That H is printed. I did quite a bit of research.

I'm like, are you sure there's no other exceptions? Is it always EX? And this seems to be the only exception where a word that begins with EX, but the H is aspirated, is that word, exhale. Yes.

Interesting. Okay. Good to know. So there's some tricky, sticky things here about English that we have to be aware of when it comes to the H. Is it silent?

Is it not? But we've gone through some of the major guidelines, I think. Right, Aubrey? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Good. Have you ever listened to native speakers and thought, I understand the words, but I still feel slightly lost.

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That's allearsenglish.com slash F-L-U-E-N-C-Y-S-C-O-R-E. Okay, Aubrey, let's put this into action with a little role play. So here I am asking you about a recent vacation. All right.

Nice. All right. Hey, you just got back from Hawaii, right? How was it? Honestly, it was great. I stayed at this little hotel near the beach. Nice. Did you have a good time?

Yeah, I was really happy to get away for a few days. I spent an hour just walking along the beach. That sounds relaxing. Yes, it was fantastic. I hope I can go back next year.

Yes. All right. Good. Nice conversation here. Lots of H's, but not any more than could turn out. I think H is a pretty common letter in the English alphabet.

Comes up all the time. The question is, should you be pushing air or not, right? And I started us with something really tricky. This is a bonus that for most of the continental United States, when we say Hawaii, we push air.

We say it just like that, Hawaii. But actually on the island of Hawaii, a lot of Hawaiians don't. They say Hawaii, And you don't hear that air push. So no wrong answer here.

However you say Hawaii is correct. But in general, most Americans who don't live in Hawaii, we do aspirate air for that word. That's interesting. I have a couple of friends have had over the years, two friends from Hawaii, actually.

But I definitely remember hearing them pronounce more of the end of the word, Hawaii. I feel more just... Yeah, they make that double vowel kind of emphasized. Mm-hmm. But I'll have to listen in and see if they pronounce the H or not.

I'll have to see. I'll check on that. And it could be not even all Hawaiians. I remember I was there. I went to Maui. It's the only time I've ever been to Hawaii.

And I heard a few people say it that way without the H. And I was like, oh, interesting. Or you hear it in movies sometimes. But probably not everybody. I feel like that's probably a regional dialect thing.

Probably. Yeah. Or how long they've been there. I don't know. That kind of thing. That makes sense, too. So for this episode, we're teaching to pronounce the H or you can not depending on how you want to do it.

But then the next phrase, pretty obviously, we need to pronounce the H in how. How was it? We can't say ow was it, right? Right. Exactly. And that is a word of if you're hurt, you say ow without any push of air.

So that's where this often becomes a new word if you don't push air for the H. Right. Someone would say, are you okay? How? Was it? Wait, what? What's happening?

What's happening? And then honestly, it was great. So here, is it silent or is it pronounced? Honestly is one of our exceptions where it is silent. So when you say honest or honestly, it's totally silent.

You don't aspirate any air. Yeah. And then I say to this little hotel near the beach here, I need to aspirate the H. I can't say hotel, I have to say hotel, right? Right.

And I got a very common error for because there are language like French is one where it's the same word, but pronounced with a silent H, hotel, just like that. So that's such an easy mistake to make in English.

So don't make that mistake. It kind of requires taking in a little bit of breath because you're pushing out breath before you say it. So you kind of need to like prepare to say the word hotel a bit more than just saying like hotel, for example. Yeah, that's true.

You have to have some air in your lungs in order to make this sound in order to push that air out. So we're kind of thinking that as we're speaking, preparing by taking the breaths that we need. Exactly. And then what, Aubrey?

And I said, did you have a good time? And yeah, again, whenever we say have, have, we're going to be pushing air for the H. And then you said, yeah, I was really happy to get away. Again, you're going to hear that H for happy.

I spent an hour just walking along the beach. Here, that H is silent. Hour. I spent an hour. And be careful not to get confused. And this is so tricky because it's a homonym, right?

Hour that's spelled O-U-R sounds exactly the same as hour that starts with the H. So you just have to know from context. That's what I was going to say. Be careful not to get it confused, right? Yes.

Okay. What's the last one? And then I hope I can go back next year. So yeah, whenever you say hope, make sure that you're pushing. Like you said, Lindsay, that you could put your hand in front of your mouth and you would feel air hit it when you push that air.

Exactly. Great episode today. Unique one. I love that this question came out of our Q&A. By the way, what is weekly Q&A, Aubrey, and who gets to go, more importantly?

Everyone who is in our personal coach classes, you get feedback from one of us to your assignments. And you also are invited to this weekly Q&A, which it's so fun. It's a chance for everyone to ask questions about what they're learning in their course or anything that they think about as they're studying English. And it's amazing the questions that students come up with there.

It's always a really fun conversation. Yeah, really good stuff. So guys, check out our courses. Go to allersenglish.com and you can see them right there on the homepage.

Check out what we have going. Join us so that you can be present at the next Q&A when the next good question comes up. Aubrey, where else can our listeners go right now to keep listening? Yes, don't miss Allers English 2706.

Scroll up if you missed that one. When to use that in English, you have likely noticed that sometimes native speakers say that, sometimes they drop it. So don't miss that episode for details about why. Yes.

Love it. And any final takeaway, Aubrey, that we can leave our listeners with? Yeah. This is one of those things where it's not the end of the world to miss the H, but there is potential for a misunderstanding, just like hangry versus angry.

There are, you know, it changes the word entirely. So you can avoid that if you have these tips about when to pronounce H. Yes. Love it. So good. Great episode today, Aubrey.

I'll see you back here very soon. All right. Take care. See you next time. All right. Bye-bye. See you next time.