Words with Silent H – Because they were adopted from different foreign languages with varied forms of pronunciation, many words in English are pronounced differently from their spellings. For instance, some characters remain silent. ‘H’ is one among them. There are three groups of silent /h/ usages in English.
The first group includes four words with ‘h’ as their first letter: ‘hour,’ ‘honest,’ ‘honor,’ and ‘heir.’ The article ‘an’ is applied with these words, instead of ‘a’, as they are considered to be words starting with a vowel sound. For example, it should be ‘an hour,’ not ‘a hour.’
*Note: The words ‘herb’ is pronounced similarly with a silent ‘h’ by some in the US and Canada.
Secondly, the silent ‘h‘ also often appears after the letter ‘w.’ However, this practice depends on the accent of the individual speaker. These words include question words (‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘where,’ ‘why,’ and ‘whether’) and a few other common words (such as, ‘whisper,’ ‘white,’ ‘wheel,’ and ‘while’).
The last category, which includes the largest number of words, is the silent ‘h’ following the letters ‘c,’ ‘g,’ and ‘r,’ as well as the prefix ‘ex.’
Moreover, there are also loanwords from Asian languages with silent ‘h,’ such as ‘Allah,’ ‘brahman,’ and ‘ghee.’