H h

This letter is NOT an aspirated consonant like Eng. "h" of "happy Harry" but it has several important functions in written Italian:

• It is used in four forms of the present tense of "avere": "ho hai ha hanno" ( I have, you sing. have, he/she/it has, they have) so that these are not confused with their homophones ( words with the same sound but different spellings and meanings) "o, ai, a, anno" ( or, to the, at, year). In Eng., there is a similar pair of homophones: "hour, our" (and, of course, "hours, ours"). Also, "heir, air".

• Inserted after the consonants "c, g, sc" it produces the "hard" sounds [k, g, sk] before "e, i". More details in the pages about those sounds.

• It is found in several interjections like "ahi, ahimè, ohi, ohibò, ehi"...

• In other interjections it is found at the end of the word and may indicate a lengthening of the vowel: "ah, eh, ih, oh, uh, mah, beh"... For the meaning and use of all these interjections, see a good dictionary.

  Loanwords like "hotel, hobby, handicap" etc. are frequently pronounced without the [h] sound.