Aspirated h

In French spelling, aspirated "h" (French: h aspiré) is an initial silent letter that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word's first vowel and the preceding word's last vowel. At the same time, the aspirated h stops the normal processes of contraction and liaison from occurring.

The name of the now-silent h refers not to a contemporary aspiration but to its former pronunciation as the voiceless glottal fricative [h] in Old French and in Middle French.