The letter h is always silent in Spanish, wherever it is in a word. The only exception is when you find it together with the letter c. The ch sound is pronounced as it is in English.
There is one letter in Spanish that trips up both native speakers and new learners: H. Because it is the only silent letter in Spanish, it can be quite confusing to remember which words are spelled with an H.
The Spanish letter h is always silent and is generally at the beginning of the word if used at all. There really is no way to predict when a word will begin with a silent h, so be sure to focus on the spelling of words that you learn beginning with an h.
The letter J sounds like the HARD G in Spanish (the sound is similar to the English H but raspier). You can produce the sound anywhere in between numbers 8 and 9 on the image below. If you produce the sound as #8 shows, the sound will be raspier [X] than if you produce as in #9 [h].
Words With Silent H. The letter H is sometimes silent when it is placed after C (CH) and it is always silent when it appears after some consonants (GH, WH, RH).
Each vowel has only one way to be pronounced, and it will be pronounced that way in every word. Unlike English, there are no silent vowels in Spanish, although some vowels will slur together to create a single sound.
Luckily in Spanish, what you see is what you pronounce. So just remember to pronounce every letter you see, because there are no silent letters (with some exception you will see after in this article: the 'h' , and the 'u' after q and between g and i,e (gue,gui)).
The letter h is always silent in Spanish, wherever it is in a word. The only exception is when you find it together with the letter c. The ch sound is pronounced as it is in English.
Spanish only has one silent letter, and it is silent 100% of the time. That letter is h. That is why the Spanish hello (hola) sounds like ola. It is important to remember that h's are always silent in Spanish, so that the English sound system does not interfere with your pronunciation of Spanish words and names.
If the h is silent, why does it exist? For reasons of etymology (word history) only. Just as the "k" in the English "know" and the "b" in "lamb" used to be audible, the Spanish h used to be pronounced ages ago. Almost all Spanish consonants have become softer over the years; the h became so soft as to become inaudible.
The Plosive (or “Hard”) Spanish B/V
When B or V appears at the beginning of a word in Spanish, it makes a “hard” (plosive) sound. This sound is very similar to the sound B makes in English, although it is just a little gentler. It's made by pressing your lips together, then opening them and releasing the air.
The first silent letter in Spanish is the letter H. This letter is always silent unless it is next to the letter C. When you see the letter C next to an H you need to make a ch sound. This sound is almost identical to the 'ch' sound in English.
But as Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out, one unusual letter is never silent: the letter V. While it makes an appearance in words like quiver and vivid, you can rest assured it always behaves the exact same way.
In Spanish, G makes the same sound as in English before the consonants R and L. In general, the hard G is the easiest ge pronunciation for English speakers because it is so similar to the hard G in English.
Pronunciation of letters "j" and "y"
In Spanish the letter j is pronounced as the "h" in the word "heart". The letter y is pronounced just like the "y" in English . Let's look at a few examples.
There is no equivalent to the English “j” sound in Spanish. Thé closest is the “y” in words like “ya” and “yanqui” which often sounds a bit like an English “j”.
Certain letters don't appear naturally in the Spanish language but are included in the Spanish alphabet because they show up in loanwords from other languages. The Spanish letters k and w only appear in borrowed words like el whisky (“whisky”), making them rare to find in Spanish words.
The most commonly used letter in Spanish is the “e”. This is followed by the “a” and, in third place, also a vowel, the “o”. The consonants 's' and 'r' complete the top five. At the other end of the scale are 'x', 'k' and 'w', which are the least used.
The H is Silent in Spanish
(hotel). (carrot). Read more about how to pronounce—or not!
Fortunately for English speakers, the official Spanish alphabet now only has the one additional letter that does not appear in the English alphabet: ñ. (Two of the letters in the Spanish alphabet, k and w, exist only to say words of foreign origin, like “kilómetro” and “whisky.”)
As in English, the Spanish q is always followed by a u except in a very few words of foreign origin. Spanish is even more particular in the sequences in which the q is used: the qu is always followed by by an e or an i, and the u is silent.
In general, each letter of the Spanish alphabet makes only one sound. So, if you learn the sound each letter makes, then you know how to read in Spanish, even if you don't know what the words mean. There are 2 letters that have more than one sound: c & g.
Most English dialects pronounce the “wh” digraph as /w/, like in “what.” Very rarely though, some dialects do slightly pronounce the “h,” which makes the “wh” digraph produce the /hw/ sound. However, it's most common for the “h” to be silent when a word has this digraph.