Hi MinChang, The 'h' should be sounded unless it is silent in the word (honest is an example of a silent 'h'). In conversation, many native speakers drop the 'h' sound but it is usually because of the accent or dialect. I would advise you to pronounce the 'h' so you are easily understood :) Hope this helps! Dan

"Can I just ignore the "h" sounds in whatever the case is?" No. Absolutely no. This would mean that you're mispronouncing words. As others have mentioned, certain words have a silent H and you just need to learn them. Of course, in contractions (have -> 've) then the H disappears. And yes, there are dialects which drop the H, but as a learner of English you need to focus on the English that everyone understands: standard English. I think what you're asking is when you can connect a word starting with H to the preceding word. You might know that our plosive sounds (P T K) actually have a puff of air (H) following them, so a phrase such as "stop him" or "meet her" might sound like we're dropping the H, but we're still pronouncing it. Basically, "stop him" and "stop-im" do sound different. There's no pronunciation trick here. Just learn to speak smoothly and naturally, and check with natve and advanced speakers to see if you're sounding right.

The only rules are that a handful of words do have a silent 'h' - 'hour' and associated words, and 'honour/honest' and associated words. We pronounce these words as if the 'h' were not there. In all other cases, the 'h' should be pronounced. Here's a fact: If a native speaker drops an 'h', other people will realise that they are just speaking sloppily. However, if a non-native drops an 'h', people will presume that you don't know how to speak English properly. Listeners will either think that you can't pronounce an 'h', or that you are making a mistake in your pronunciation. Here is a list of pronunciation problems which make Korean people difficult to understand when they are speaking English: https://pronunciationstudio.com/korean-speakers-english-pronunciation-errors/ Do you really want to drop your 'h's and add an extra barrier to being understood? I wouldn't think so. Just to your best to pronounce English as correctly as you can. Don't make more problems for yourself !

Hi, your question is related to the matter of chOosing the correct indeterminate article in front of a word beginning with H. So, you could receive even more accurate answers if you asked: - should I use A or AN with a word beginning with H? how to distinguish them?

for an american accent you do not drop the H. It is in many different european english accents that you will hear the H dropped. So if you are learning basic english the H is not dropped