Why Does Spanish Have a Silent H? If the letter H is silent in Spanish, why is it even there? Words like: hola hacer hombre hablar all contain an h, but in modern Spanish, that letter is normally not pronounced at all. So why didn't Spanish simply get rid of it? The answer is mostly historical. Many Spanish words with h originally came from Latin words beginning with f. For example: facere → hacer ferrum → hierro farina → harina Over time, in some varieties of early Spanish, the initial f began to weaken. It was eventually pronounced more like an aspirated sound — something similar to the English h — and later disappeared completely from pronunciation. But the spelling remained. That is why modern Spanish has words such as hacer and harina with an h that nobody pronounces. Not every Spanish h comes from an old Latin f, though. Some words kept the letter because of their Greek or Latin spelling, while others entered Spanish from different languages. And there is one important exception: When h appears after c, we get ch: chico chocolate noche In that case, it is definitely not silent. So the Spanish h may seem useless, but it is actually a small fossil from the history of the language. Sometimes spelling remembers sounds that pronunciation forgot.