Thread: Please help my English-Learning friend

I am a native speaker of English, but I have a friend who is a Russian learning English. She pronounces H like Russian Х (kh sound.) For instance she pronounces "half" like "хаф" What advice can I give her on how to pronounce the "H" sound correctly?

the "h" is just air being let out, whereas the "x" involves activity in the throat. Tell her to stop using her throat so much.

There are as many -h- sounds in English as there are vowels, because -h- always occurs before a vowel and consists of the sound of breath between the open vocal chords and out of the mouth which is already prepared for the following vowel.

Don't make any special friction in the back/middle of your mouth. This can make you unintelligible. Don't force it, it should be very gentle and subtle.

There are only three "h"s as far as I can think of:

Normal escape of air: "hello" "hat" "holly"
French unaspirated: "honest" "hour" (do these only ever happen before "o" in English? I couldn't think of other examples.)
Changing previous letter: "cherry" "night" "Philip" "shut" "the" "thin"

Originally Posted by Oddo

French unaspirated: "honest" "hour" (do these only ever happen before "o" in English? I couldn't think of other examples.)

No. Take 'heir', for example.

Ask her just to expire or blow out a candle without voice and without lips-rounding, as professor Higgins did with Eliza in Pygmalion.

what is Pygmalion? Also, I disagree with there being an H preceding every vowel. "Ed" sounds distinctly different from "head."

Originally Posted by umania

what is Pygmalion?

My Fair Lady without the songs.