haut

The word haut as an adjective generally means "high", "upper", and as a noun means "top", "top part". You may also be familiar with the expression en haut ("upstairs"), or en haut de ("at the top of").

What you may not have realised is that haut is a very special kind of word that occurs in French called an h aspiré word. So what's so special about an h aspiré word? Well, to explain, let's first remind ourselves of some aspects of how "ordinary" words behave in French.

If you pronounce the word haut in isolation, it consists of a single vowel, as does the word eau. Recall that with the word eau, as with all words beginning with a vowel, the article le or la (in this case, it would theoretically be la) must shorten to l'. There's no possibility of saying either la eau or dans la eau; the only grammatical form is (dans) l'eau. And when a preposition comes before a noun beginning with a vowel (or in fact, in most cases where the first word of the preposition's complement begins with a vowel), as in sans eau, the final consonant of that preposition is practically always pronounced. So sans eau is pronounced san-z-eau.

So much for words beginning with a vowel. Now let's consider words beginning with a consonant. The opposite of haut is bas. The article before words beginning with a consonant is always written "fully" as le or la: for example, dans le Bas Jura ("in the Lower Jura"). But in rapid speech, the word le is generally pronounced without the final -e[1]-- so dans le bas (Jura) would actually be pronounced dans l' bas....

In the case of a word like haut, it turns out that this word behaves neither exactly like a word beginning with a consonant nor like one beginning with a vowel. Specifically, what happens is as follows:

- the word does not permit liaison: in other words, the n of en haut is not pronounced
- the word does not permit the final -e to be elided, so that le haut is never pronounced l' haut (recall, normal words beginning with a consonant do generally allow this, so it's not true that "h aspiré words behave as though they begin with a consoannt", as various textbooks and grammars misleadingly state)
- just as they don't permit the contraction of the article, h aspiré words also use the forms au and du: au haut, du haut (cf à l'homme, de l'homme)

So how can you tell whether a word is an h aspiré word? Well, there's generally no way to be sure. Some common examples include haricot ("bean"), Hollande Holland and Hongrie (Hungary), hockey hockey, hérisson hedgehog, haïr to hate. In general, words related to an h aspiré word are also treated as h aspiré words: so hausse, hauteur, hautbois are all h aspiré words like haut; la haine follows haïr etc. Conversely, if you find that a word with a given prefix is or isn't an h aspiré word, it's likely that all words with that prefix will follow suit. Foreign names beginning with a vowel sound are also commonly treated as h aspiré words nowadays: so one would say and write de York, du Hertfordshire etc, and not usually d'York, de l'Hertfordshire (though until a few decades ago the latter were apparently more common. There are also actually one or two regular French words (e.g. ouate, "cotton wool", "quilting/padding") which are, at least sometimes, treated as an h aspiré word even though they don't actually begin with h in the spelling.

Occasionally, there is actually cross-speaker variation as to whether a given word is an h aspiré word or not. Not all speakers actually treat haricot as such.

Finally, it's worth reminding ourselves of a difficult pair: le héros, h aspiré word, means "the hero". But l'héroïne, "the heroine" (either a female hero or the name of the drug), is not. This is worth remembering, because l'héro is actually a slang short form of l'héroïne (this time always referring to the drug...).

[1] N.B. Strictly speaking, some studies suggest that some phonetic remnant of the "deleted" vowel may be left, such as lip rounding.