Impariamo l’alfabeto italiano con parole semplici

Why is the letter H silent in Italian?

Italian’s letter H has no sound of its own — you never hear it spoken. But it isn’t useless. It’s there to tell apart words that sound the same: ho, hai, ha, hanno (forms of “to have”) versus o, ai, a, anno. It also sits between c or g and the letters e or i to keep those hard, so che sounds like “keh” and ghi like “ghee.”

Two hosts walk through the alphabet and pause at this letter: “Non si pronuncia la h” — the H isn’t pronounced. The silent H comes from Latin, where it slowly stopped being said; Italian kept the written letter mainly to mark a few words and to do spelling work. Compare ho (“I have”) with o (“or”), or ha (“he/she has”) with a (“to, at”) — same sound, different job. The hardening trick is everywhere too: the H is what keeps che/chi and ghe/ghi hard. So a letter you never hear still changes what other letters do.