[Support] pronunciation question

[steliosl]

dear teacher,
My name is Stelios and Iam a student on the brink of taking the proficiency test(in December). Of course, somebody who is at this level has many things to ask, but taking note of the fact that I am not capable of remembering now everything that is not clear to my mind, I 'll have to ask one of them, that may not be so important, but has really made me thinking of it all the time. There are many english words that start with "h". My question is: When do we have to pronunciate it and when not? I know that we don't pronunciate it in the word "hour" or "honour", but "h" has to be pronunciated in the word "harmony", fpr example. What is the difference and how are we due to know that one word belongs to a specific category in which words starting with "h" are not to be pronunciated with their first digit?
I really hope that you will find my question worthy of being answered. In any case, thank you very much for providing us this chance.
Yours faithfully

[RonBee]

There aren't that many words that begin with "h" in which the "h" is not pronounced. (At least in AmE.) There are only a few, so you can memorize them all. They are:

herb(s)
herbal
hour(s)
hourly
honor(s)
honorable
honorarium

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by steliosl

I really hope that you will find my question worthy of being answered. In any case, thank you very much for providing us this chance.
Yours faithfully

You'll note that all of Ron's example are derivative from the Romance languages.
Anglo-saxon words like horse, house, head, hair, hang generally (?always) need the /h/ sound.
Of course, you'd need some idea about which is which to use this rule.

[RonBee]

There are a couple more, but they are not used very often. They are:

herbarium
herbaceous

[Anglika]

But beware - in BrE, "herb" and its derivatives do sound the "h".