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u/Emile_Largo 3d ago
I learned very early on that it's also normal not to elide "Les Halles". Why? Because....
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u/collodf 3d ago
Same reason that on English it is ‘a home’ but ‘an hour’ and ‘a habit’ but ‘an honour’
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u/PsychicMeditation 3d ago
No. You pronounce the h in some of those words and in others you don't. That's the difference. Do you pronounce the H in Hongrie ?
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u/collodf 3d ago
The actual pronunciation today is less relevant than the theoretical different between aspirated h words and silent h words. Many ago, these words (often of Germanic origin) actually had a breathy "h" sound in French, as they still do in English. You can disagree with me but that is the answer to your question. No need to be so aggressive 🤨
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u/Slight-Tomatillo7837 3d ago
Why didn't you just say all that in the first place then?
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u/collodf 3d ago
I did. The answer was there. Why go on to Reddit to ask a question and then be a knob and cocky when people respond????
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u/BeautifulUpstairs 3d ago
Because you responded incorrectly. There is a synchronic difference that you breezily elided.
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u/Solid_Improvement_95 Native (France) 2d ago
Our ancestors used to but they stopped a few centuries ago. So the h is silent, yet it isn't. Make it make sense.
What about cockney accent? Don't they say "a 'ouse" and "an hour"? If so, this is just like French ;)
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 3d ago
It is slightly more complex (and incidentally much discussed) but basically it is as others have said. If it makes you feel better, many many languages have the same sort of phenomenon where a sound X becomes the same as Y (or as silence) and yet for centuries people do something words that once had X that is different from those with original Y or silence. Many varieties of English, some of German, Yiddish, Dutch, Bulgarian, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. etc. How and why this happens has never been established. But it is a extremely common. A term that many (not all) linguists use here is morphophoneme (though when this was coined it meant something else) so we would say that there is a morphophoneme in French that is the same as silence but acts in some ways as a consonant but also in one way like NOTHING else, namely, a preceding word-final silent -e is actually pronounced before this, so une hache, the -e of une is pronounced, tho this too is complicated. But as to which words it is, if you dont know you just have to memorize yes. Also however some words that begin with a vowel in writing at least sometimes behave like h-aspiré. Hence le onze and not l'onze.
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u/Hljoumur 3d ago
Just a semi related tidbit since someone already explained it, both Hs are silent in Parisian French; some dialects do pronounce aspirated H like [h] in English. I recently watched a meme complication where someone said « appelle le [h]endek », and I think the person was Belgian.
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u/nanpossomas 3d ago
Hendek is Arabic. Unincorporated,Arabic loanwords are a whole nother beast and frequently keep close to the Maghrebi Arabic pronunciation and its many unFrench consonants.
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u/imladrikofloren 3d ago
Because fuck you, that's why (which is the answer for most confusing things about french).
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u/phrasingapp 3d ago
So I was just recently asked about this. The way it was explained to me was some words came from Latin, some words came from Germanic/northern influence, both used h but were pronounced slightly differently. Over time they lost their pronunciation, but the contractile difference remained
It’s been so long since I learned this though and can’t say I know it to be a reliable source (I can’t remember what the source was). If there’s a linguist who can confirm or deny this that would be awesome
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u/Intelligent_Donut605 Native - Québec 2d ago
Words that come from latin (like hibou) and other languages where the h is pronounced treat the H as a consonnant for liaison and such, where as words that come from greek (like humain) and other languages where the h is silent do have liaison and such as if it started with a vowel.
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u/jdu70437 3d ago
The answer to this can only be found in reputable French language instruction books, because redditors are too busy trying to one-up each other with their bespoke autisms.
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u/Solid_Improvement_95 Native (France) 3d ago
There are two kinds of h in French, the "aspirated h" and the "silent h".
Those names are misleading because they are actually both silent, but the "silent h" allows a liaison, as if it didn't exist whereas the "aspirated h" prevents the liaison.
Words like Hongrie, haricot, halle, héros begin with an aspirated h so: la Hongrie, le haricot, la halle, le héros.
Words like habit, homme, heure, héroïne begin with a silent h so: l'habit, l'homme, l'heure, l'héroïne.