Spelling: h or no h

Ortografía: h o no h

Native Spanish speakers don't usually struggle with spelling because Spanish is a mainly phonetic language: it's pronounced the way it's written. Each letter has a specific sound, so it's relatively easy to write the words the way you hear them.  

However one of the difficulties for Spanish language learners and even Spanish-speakers is knowing whether to write a word with an h or notas the letter h is silent in Spanish, therefore when you hear a word pronounced you don't know whether it contains an h.

Luckily there are some rules to follow that will help you decide.

Which Spanish words are written with "h"?

  • You need an h in front of dyphthongs ua, ue and ui. For example:

hueso, hueco, huevo, cacahuetebone, hollow, egg, peanut

huacarear, huachafo to throw up [colloquial], pretentious [used in Latin America]

huir, huidizoto escape, elusive

  • With words that start with ia or ie:
 
hielo, hierba, hiatoice, grass, hiatus
  •  Words that start with hum- and are followed by a vowel:
 
humor, humillante, humo, humanidadhumour, humiliating, smoke, humanity

 

 

Which Spanish words are not written with "h"?

  •  Words that start with alv- or alb-:
albaricoque, alba, albino, alveolo, Álvaroapricot, dawn, albino, alveolus, Álvaro (proper name)
  •  Words that start with ex- (unless they use the prefix of Greek origin hexa- like hexágono (hexagon) for example):
explotar, extraer, extranjero, éxito, exigir, explicarto exploit, to extract, foreign, success, to demand, to explain

 

It's also important to note that there are lots of words using prefixes of Greek origin that are all written with h; for example: halógeno (halogen)hepatitis (hepatitis)hipopótamo (hippopotamus),  hipermercado (superstore), etc.

 

See also Spelling: b or v and Spelling: ll or y

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