In English is H a vowel or a consonant?

Question

You would say a half pint but an honest answer.
Is it a vowel when silent and a consonant when not ?
A horrible thought but AN historic decision.

It is AN historic not a historic.
It is an honest answer when written down
have you seen 'a honest man'?
If like a lot of you say it is ALWAYS a consonant...why would n't you write
'a honest man'?

You say 'Y' is sometimes a vowel..when do you use 'an y.....'

Answer 1

h is a CONSONANT!!! (glottal fricative)
/h/ is silent (not pronounced) in certain words where it occurs word-initially (hour, honest, honour, heir). This means that the first sound you pronounce in 'honest' is 'o' - in this case you use 'an' not 'a' because the next word begins with a vowel sound.

In some accents /h/ is lost - then the /h/ words will behave as if they had an initial vowel.
Such loss of /h/ is usually considered characteristic of uneducated speech, but certain function words (have, has, had) frequently lose /h/ in RP in unaccented, non-initial situations in connected speech.

Some older speakers treat an unaccented syllable beginning with an as in 'historical', as if it belonged to to the special group 'hour, honest' etc. i.e. without any initial /h/.

Answer 2

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RE:
In English is H a vowel or a consonant?
You would say a half pint but an honest answer.
Is it a vowel when silent and a consonant when not ?
A horrible thought but AN historic decision.

Answer 3

The problem is that the concept of vowels and consonants really only applies to sounds. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't really be applied to written letters of the alphabet, and when it is, it leads to problems

Think of the way we pronounce the word 'happy' /hapi/ . This contains two vowels (/a/ and /i/) and and two consonants (/h/ and /p/).

As most letters are pretty constant in whether or not they represent a vowel sound, people just call them vowels or consonants. This leads them to say that 'happy' contains three consonants, one vowel and a half-vowel. But this definition of vowel and consonant is really pretty useless.

Let's take honest as a further example.

Most speakers of English pronounce it with two vowels and three consonants; the initial sound is a vowel. Although the sound written /h/ is a consonant, it doesn't appear anywhere in the word, so it's meaningless to ask whether h is a vowel or a consonant in it.

Answer 4

It's always a consonant. There are exceptions to the rule you're talking about - and it has nothing to do with H being a vowel or a consonant.

I Hope this Helps!

Answer 5

Consonant

Answer 6

H is a consonant, English vowels are A,E,I,O,U and sometimes Y.

Answer 7

Vowels in English language are A E I O U and sometimes Y (NOt very often we use the Y as a vowel though) That is all. Rest are consonants.

Answer 8

It is always a consonant! Only sometimes do people consider that Y can act as a vowel apart from AEIOU.

Hope that helps.

Answer 9

It's a consonant - Only A, E, I, O and U are vowels.

when you say "an honest answer" outloud, the 'h' is silent. this gives it the "ah" sound, making it appear to start with a vowel.

Answer 10

It would actually be "A historic decision", because H is a consonant. The only vowels are A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.