Lessons Unit 1, lesson 26
h as in hat
One consonant, on its own page. Hear it, watch where it sits in each word's sheet, then say the words yourself.
What do the marks mean?
Want the full walkthrough? Read the map explains every mark, with practice.
hh as in happy
Just breathe out, like fogging a window: h. The lightest sound in English — but don't skip it.
Now say it yourself
Read each word from its sheet, out loud, three times. Where there's a play button, listen first and copy what you hear. Slow is fine — speaking clearly matters more than speaking fast. Tap a word's microphone to record yourself and see which sounds landed.
Check your pronunciation, on this device. The first use downloads a small AI listener (about 40 MB, one time, then it's cached). Your voice is analyzed here in your browser — it never leaves your device.
H-dropping: the sound that disappears
Many languages either skip h entirely or replace it with a harsher scrape from the throat. In English, h is neither — it's just breath, plain and light, with no friction and no throat noise.
If you drop it, hat collapses into at and house into ows. Those are real, different words to a listener, so the missing h changes meaning, not just accent.
It's breath, not friction
Try fogging a mirror or your glasses — that soft, open exhale is exactly the shape of h in happy and hay. There's no buzzing, no tongue contact, nothing to force.
Because it's so light, h often gets swallowed in fast speech even by careful learners. Say who and hot and make sure a breath, however small, comes before the vowel starts.
There's no fixed place in the mouth for h either — it simply takes the shape of whatever vowel follows, so he and hand can feel quite different while still being the same sound.