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Letter of the Latin alphabet

H
H h
(See below)

Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[h] [x] [ħ] [0̸] [ɦ] [ɥ] [ʜ] [ʔ] [◌ʰ] [ç]
Unicode codepoint	`U+0048, U+0068`
Alphabetical position	viii
History
Development	Η η 𐌇 H h
Time menses	~-700 to present
Descendants	Ħ Ƕ Ⱶ Һ ʰ h ħ $\mathbb {H}$
Sisters	И Һ Ԧ ח ح ܚ ࠄ ࠇ 𐎅 𐎈 Հ հ
Variations	(Come across below)
Other
Other letters unremarkably used with	h(ten), ch, gh, nh, ph, sh, ſh, th, wh, (x)h
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction betwixt [ ], / / and ⟨⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

H, or h, is the eighth letter of the alphabet in the ISO bones Latin alphabet. Its proper name in English is aitch (pronounced , plural aitches), or regionally haitch .^[1]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph fence	Proto-Sinaitic ḥaṣr	Phoenician Heth	Greek Heta	Etruscan H	Latin H

The original Semitic letter Heth most probable represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (ħ). The grade of the alphabetic character probably stood for a fence or posts.

The Greek Eta 'Η' in primitive Greek alphabets, before coming to correspond a long vowel, /ɛː/, notwithstanding represented a similar sound, the voiceless glottal fricative /h/. In this context, the letter eta is also known as Heta to underline this fact. Thus, in the One-time Italic alphabets, the letter Heta of the Euboean alphabet was adopted with its original sound value /h/.

While Etruscan and Latin had /h/ as a phoneme, almost all Romance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the /h/ phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and Castilian adult a secondary /h/ from /f/, before losing it again; diverse Spanish dialects have developed [h] every bit an allophone of /s/ or /x/ in nigh Castilian-speaking countries, and diverse dialects of Portuguese use it every bit an allophone of /ʀ/. 'H' is likewise used in many spelling systems in digraphs and trigraphs, such as 'ch', which represents /tʃ/ in Spanish, Galician, Quondam Portuguese, and English; /ʃ/ in French and modern Portuguese; /k/ in Italian, French, and English; /10/ in German, Czech, Smoothen, Slovak, i native word of English, and a few loanwords into English; and /ç/ in German.

Proper name in English

For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as and spelled "aitch"^[1] or occasionally "eitch". The pronunciation and the associated spelling "haitch" is ofttimes considered to exist h-calculation and is considered nonstandard in England.^[2] It is, all the same, a characteristic of Hiberno-English,^[3] equally well as scattered varieties of Edinburgh, England, and Welsh English,^[4] and in Commonwealth of australia and Nova Scotia.

The perceived name of the letter of the alphabet affects the pick of indefinite article before initialisms beginning with H: for example "an H-bomb" or "a H-bomb". The pronunciation /heɪtʃ/ may be a hypercorrection formed by analogy with the names of the other letters of the alphabet, virtually of which include the sound they correspond.^[5]

The haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English language people born since 1982,^[6] and polls continue to testify this pronunciation condign more than mutual amongst younger native speakers. Despite this increasing number, the pronunciation without the /h/ audio is still considered to be standard in England, although the pronunciation with /h/ is also attested as a legitimate variant.^[2]

Government disagree nigh the history of the letter of the alphabet's name. The Oxford English Lexicon says the original name of the letter was [ˈaha] in Latin; this became [ˈaka] in Vulgar Latin, passed into English language via Quondam French [atʃ], and by Eye English was pronounced [aːtʃ]. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English derives information technology from French hache from Latin haca or hic. Anatoly Liberman suggests a conflation of two obsolete orderings of the alphabet, one with H immediately followed by K and the other without whatever K: reciting the old's ..., H, K, L,... as [...(h)a ka el ...] when reinterpreted for the latter ..., H, Fifty,... would imply a pronunciation [(h)a ka] for H.^[7]

Use in writing systems

English

In English, ⟨h⟩ occurs every bit a single-alphabetic character grapheme (being either silent or representing the voiceless glottal fricative () and in various digraphs, such as ⟨ch⟩ , , , or ), ⟨gh⟩ (silent, /ɡ/, /thousand/, /p/, or /f/), ⟨ph⟩ (/f/), ⟨rh⟩ (/r/), ⟨sh⟩ (), ⟨th⟩ ( or ), ⟨wh⟩ (/hw/ ^[eight]). The letter is silent in a syllable rime, as in ah, ohm, dahlia, cheetah, pooh-poohed, as well equally in sure other words (mostly of French origin) such equally 60 minutes, honest, herb (in American but non British English) and vehicle (in sure varieties of English). Initial /h/ is often not pronounced in the weak form of some function words including had, has, have, he, her, him, his, and in some varieties of English (including almost regional dialects of England and Wales) information technology is often omitted in all words (see '⟨h⟩'-dropping). It was formerly common for an rather than a to exist used as the indefinite article before a word beginning with /h/ in an unstressed syllable, as in "an historian", just use of a is now more usual (see English articles § Indefinite commodity). In English, The pronunciation of ⟨h⟩ as /h/ can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. That is, when the phoneme /h/ precedes a vowel, /h/ may be realized equally a voiceless version of the subsequent vowel. For example the word ⟨hit⟩, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt].^[9] H is the 8th nigh oft used letter in the English language (afterwards South, Northward, I, O, A, T, and E), with a frequency of about 4.2% in words.^{[ citation needed ]} When h is placed after certain other consonants, it modifies their pronunciation in various ways, due east.one thousand. for ch, gh, ph, sh, and thursday.

Other languages

In the German linguistic communication, the name of the letter is pronounced /haː/. Following a vowel, information technology oftentimes silently indicates that the vowel is long: In the word erhöhen ('enhance'), the second ⟨h⟩ is mute for most speakers outside of Switzerland. In 1901, a spelling reform eliminated the silent ⟨h⟩ in well-nigh all instances of ⟨th⟩ in native German language words such equally thun ('to do') or Thür ('door'). It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such every bit Theater ('theater') and Thron ('throne'), which continue to be spelled with ⟨th⟩ even after the concluding German spelling reform.

In Spanish and Portuguese, ⟨h⟩ (" hache " in Spanish, pronounced ['atʃe], or agá in Portuguese, pronounced [aˈɣa] or [ɐˈɡa]) is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in hijo [ˈixo] ('son') and húngaro [ˈũɡaɾu] ('Hungarian'). The spelling reflects an before pronunciation of the sound /h/. In words where the ⟨h⟩ is derived from a Latin /f/, it is still sometimes pronounced with the value [h] in some regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, Canarias, Cantabria, and the Americas. Some words beginning with [je] or [we], such as hielo , 'ice' and huevo , 'egg', were given an initial ⟨h⟩ to avoid confusion betwixt their initial semivowels and the consonants ⟨j⟩ and ⟨v⟩. This is because ⟨j⟩ and ⟨v⟩ used to be considered variants of ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively. ⟨h⟩ also appears in the digraph ⟨ch⟩, which represents /tʃ/ in Spanish and northern Portugal, and /ʃ/ in varieties that have merged both sounds (the latter originally represented by ⟨x⟩ instead), such as most of the Portuguese linguistic communication and some Spanish dialects, prominently Chilean Castilian.

In French, the name of the letter of the alphabet is written equally "ache" and pronounced /aʃ/. The French orthography classifies words that begin with this letter in 2 means, one of which can affect the pronunciation, even though it is a silent letter either way. The H muet, or "mute" ⟨h⟩, is considered every bit though the letter were not there at all, so for example the singular definite article le or la, which is elided to l' before a vowel, elides before an H muet followed past a vowel. For example, le + hébergement becomes l'hébergement ('the accommodation'). The other kind of ⟨h⟩ is chosen h aspiré ("aspirated '⟨h⟩'", though it is not normally aspirated phonetically), and does not allow elision or liaison. For example in le homard ('the lobster') the article le remains unelided, and may be separated from the noun with a bit of a glottal end. Well-nigh words that brainstorm with an H muet come from Latin (honneur, homme) or from Greek through Latin (hécatombe), whereas most words showtime with an H aspiré come up from Germanic (harpe, hareng) or not-Indo-European languages (harem, hamac, haricot); in some cases, an orthographic ⟨h⟩ was added to disambiguate the [five] and semivowel [ɥ] pronunciations earlier the introduction of the distinction between the messages ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩: huit (from uit, ultimately from Latin octo), huître (from uistre, ultimately from Greek through Latin ostrea).

In Italian, ⟨h⟩ has no phonological value. Its most important uses are in the digraphs 'ch' /k/ and 'gh' /ɡ/, besides as to differentiate the spellings of certain short words that are homophones, for example some present tense forms of the verb avere ('to take') (such every bit hanno, 'they accept', vs. anno, 'year'), and in brusk interjections (oh, ehi).

Some languages, including Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian utilise ⟨h⟩ as a breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ], often every bit an allophone of otherwise voiceless /h/ in a voiced environment.

In Hungarian, the letter has no fewer than five pronunciations, with three additional uses as a productive and not-productive element of digraphs. The letter of the alphabet h may correspond /h/ as in the name of the Székely town Hargita; intervocalically it represents /ɦ/ as in tehén; information technology represents /x/ in the give-and-take doh; it represents /ç/ in ihlet; and it is silent in cseh. Equally part of a digraph, it represents, in archaic spelling, /t͡ʃ/ with the alphabetic character c equally in the name Széchenyi; it represents, again, with the letter c, /x/ in pech (which is pronounced [pɛxː]); in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, equally in the name Beöthy which is pronounced [bøːti] (without the intervening h, the name Beöty could exist pronounced [bøːc]); and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, equally in the name Vargha, pronounced [vɒrgɒ].

In Ukrainian and Byelorussian, when written in the Latin alphabet, ⟨h⟩ is also normally used for /ɦ/, which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter of the alphabet ⟨г⟩.

In Irish, ⟨h⟩ is not considered an independent letter of the alphabet, except for a very few non-native words, however ⟨h⟩ placed later a consonant is known equally a "séimhiú" and indicates lenition of that consonant; ⟨h⟩ began to replace the original form of a séimhiú, a dot placed above the consonant, afterward the introduction of typewriters.

In near dialects of Polish, both ⟨h⟩ and the digraph ⟨ch⟩ always represent /x/.

In Basque, during the 20th century it was non used in the orthography of the Basque dialects in Spain simply information technology marked an aspiration in the North-Eastern dialects. During the standardization of Basque in the 1970s, the compromise was reached that h would exist accustomed if it were the first consonant in a syllable. Hence, herri ("people") and etorri ("to come up") were accustomed instead of erri (Biscayan) and ethorri (Souletin). Speakers could pronounce the h or not. For the dialects lacking the aspiration, this meant a complexity added to the standardized spelling.

Other systems

As a phonetic symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), it is used mainly for the so-called aspirations (fricative or trills), and variations of the plain letter are used to represent ii sounds: the lowercase form ⟨h⟩ represents the voiceless glottal fricative, and the small-scale capital form ⟨ʜ⟩ represents the voiceless epiglottal fricative (or trill). With a bar, minuscule ⟨ħ⟩ is used for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Specific to the IPA, a hooked ⟨ɦ⟩ is used for a voiced glottal fricative, and a superscript ⟨ʰ⟩ is used to represent aspiration.

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

H with diacritics: Ĥ ĥ Ȟ ȟ Ħ ħ Ḩ ḩ Ⱨ ⱨ ẖ ẖ Ḥ ḥ Ḣ ḣ Ḧ ḧ Ḫ ḫ ꞕ Ꜧ ꜧ
IPA-specific symbols related to H: ʜ ꟸ ɦ ʰ ʱ ɥ ᶣ ^[x]
ᴴ : Modifier letter H is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet^[11]
ₕ : Subscript small h was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[12]
ʰ : Modifier alphabetic character modest h is used in Indo-European studies^[13]
ʮ and ʯ : Turned H with fishhook and turned H with fishhook and tail are used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics^[14]
Ƕ ƕ : Latin alphabetic character hwair, derived from a ligature of the digraph hv, and used to transliterate the Gothic alphabetic character 𐍈 (which represented the audio [hʷ])
Ⱶ ⱶ : Claudian letters^[15]
Ꟶ ꟶ : Reversed half h used in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul^[16]

Ancestors, siblings, and descendants in other alphabets

𐤇 : Semitic letter Heth, from which the following symbols derive
- Η η : Greek alphabetic character Eta, from which the following symbols derive
  - 𐌇 : Old Italic H, the ancestor of modern Latin H
    - ᚺ, ᚻ : Runic letter haglaz, which is probably a descendant of Erstwhile Italic H
  - Һ һ : Cyrillic letter Shha, which derives from Latin H
  - И и : Cyrillic letter И, which derives from the Greek letter Eta
  - 𐌷 : Gothic letter of the alphabet haal

Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations

$h$ : Planck constant
ℏ : reduced Planck constant
$\mathbb {H}$ : Blackboard bold capital letter H used in quaternion note

Computing codes

Character information
Preview	H		h
Unicode name	LATIN Upper-case letter Alphabetic character H		LATIN Small-scale LETTER H
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	72	U+0048	104	U+0068
UTF-8	72	48	104	68
Numeric grapheme reference	H	H	h	h
EBCDIC family unit	200	C8	136	88
ASCII ^ane	72	48	104	68

¹ and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859, and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

References

^ ^a ^b "H" Oxford English language Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster'south 3rd New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "aitch" or "haitch", op. cit.
^ ^a ^b "'Haitch' or 'aitch'? How do yous pronounce 'H'?". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 Oct 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
^ Dolan, T. P. (1 January 2004). A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish gaelic Utilise of English. Gill & Macmillan Ltd. ISBN9780717135356. Archived from the original on 17 January 2017. Retrieved three September 2016 – via Google Books.
^ Vaux, Bert. The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes Archived 24 May 2019 at the Wayback Automobile. University of Cambridge.
^ Todd, L. & Hancock I.: "International English language Ipod", folio 254. Routledge, 1990.
^ John C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, folio 360, Pearson, Harlow, 2008
^ Liberman, Anatoly (vii August 2013). "Alphabet soup, part 2: H and Y". Oxford Etymologist. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on four October 2013. Retrieved 3 Oct 2013.
^ In many dialects, /hw/ and /w/ have merged
^ "phonology - Why is /h/ chosen voiceless vowel phonetically, and /h/ consonant phonologically?". Linguistics Stack Exchange. Archived from the original on five May 2019. Retrieved five May 2019.
^ Constable, Peter (19 April 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 Oct 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ Everson, Michael; et al. (twenty March 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 February 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (27 January 2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ Anderson, Deborah; Everson, Michael (7 June 2004). "L2/04-191: Proposal to encode half-dozen Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on xi October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ Melt, Richard; Everson, Michael (20 September 2001). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on xi October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ Everson, Michael (12 August 2005). "L2/05-193R2: Proposal to add together Claudian Latin messages to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 June 2019. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
^ West, Andrew; Everson, Michael (25 March 2019). "L2/xix-092: Proposal to encode Latin Letter of the alphabet Reversed Half H" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on thirteen June 2019. Retrieved 17 March 2020.

External links

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