Voted Best Answer
Sep 30, 2020 - 07:32 AM
Hi Brian
Nice catch on this one!
Unfortunately, this is one of these cases in French where it's better to try to retain word by word.
Here's the thing: there are two types of Hs in French, neither of them is voiced, yet one of them is called "aspired H", it's inherited from the old French language and words using aspired H can't use the contracted article L' nor CET, instead they behave as if they were starting with a consonnant. That's the case for : Le haut / Ce haut.
As there is no rule, no easy way of knowing which word has an aspired H or not, it's better to learn each word one by one.
Many words starting with "HA" have an aspired H, yet there are many other cases too.
In the program, we chose to highlight the case where the H is NOT aspired since it's a bit special, and also because most of the words we're using in the first levels don't have it, like l'hôtel, l'homme, l'hôpital...(you can notice that many words starting in HO don't have aspired H...)
It's a purely etymological reason, so I can see how strange it might seem! You also have to know that many French people get some of these wrong, so my advice is don't worry too much about them, just try to memorize the words you come across with the right articles little by little and you'll be fine. :)
Nice catch on this one!
Unfortunately, this is one of these cases in French where it's better to try to retain word by word.
Here's the thing: there are two types of Hs in French, neither of them is voiced, yet one of them is called "aspired H", it's inherited from the old French language and words using aspired H can't use the contracted article L' nor CET, instead they behave as if they were starting with a consonnant. That's the case for : Le haut / Ce haut.
As there is no rule, no easy way of knowing which word has an aspired H or not, it's better to learn each word one by one.
Many words starting with "HA" have an aspired H, yet there are many other cases too.
In the program, we chose to highlight the case where the H is NOT aspired since it's a bit special, and also because most of the words we're using in the first levels don't have it, like l'hôtel, l'homme, l'hôpital...(you can notice that many words starting in HO don't have aspired H...)
It's a purely etymological reason, so I can see how strange it might seem! You also have to know that many French people get some of these wrong, so my advice is don't worry too much about them, just try to memorize the words you come across with the right articles little by little and you'll be fine. :)
