H, or h, is the eighth
letter
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
in the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
, used in the
modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is
''aitch'' (pronounced , plural ''aitches''), or regionally ''haitch'' .
["H" '']Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
,'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "aitch" or "haitch", op. cit.
History
The original
Semitic letter
Heth
Heth, sometimes written Chet, but more accurately Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ḥēt 𐤇 , Hebrew Ḥēth , Aramaic Ḥēth , Syriac Ḥēṯ ܚ, Arabic Ḥā' , and Maltese Ħ, ħ.
Heth origin ...
most likely represented the
voiceless pharyngeal fricative
The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the trans ...
(). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.
The
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
Eta
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
'Η' in
archaic Greek alphabets
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All form ...
, before coming to represent a long vowel, , still represented a similar sound, the
voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', b ...
. In this context, the letter eta is also known as
Heta to underline this fact. Thus, in the
Old Italic alphabets
The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which ...
, the letter Heta of the
Euboean alphabet was adopted with its original sound value .
While
Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy
*Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization
**Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
** Etrusca ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
had as a
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
, almost all
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
lost the sound—
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
later re-borrowed the phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
developed a secondary from , before losing it again; various Spanish dialects have developed as an
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
of or in most Spanish-speaking countries, and various dialects of
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
use it as an allophone of . 'H' is also used in many spelling systems in
digraphs and
trigraphs, such as 'ch', which represents in Spanish,
Galician, and Old Portuguese; in
French and modern Portuguese; in
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
and French.
Name in English
For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as and spelled "aitch"
[ or occasionally "eitch". The pronunciation and the associated spelling "haitch" is often considered to be h-adding and is considered non-standard in England.] It is, however, a feature of Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English (from Latin '' Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland ...
, and occurs sporadically in various other dialects.
The perceived name of the letter affects the choice of indefinite article before initialisms beginning with H: for example "an H-bomb" or "a H-bomb". The pronunciation may be a hypercorrection formed by analogy with the names of the other letters of the alphabet, most of which include the sound they represent.
The ''haitch'' pronunciation of ''h'' has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982, and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers. Despite this increasing number, the pronunciation without the sound is still considered to be standard in England, although the pronunciation with is also attested as a legitimate variant. In Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
, the pronunciation of the letter has been used as a shibboleth
A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwo ...
, with Catholics typically pronouncing it with the and Protestants pronouncing the letter without it.
Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The ''Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'' says the original name of the letter was in Latin; this became in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French , and by Middle English was pronounced . ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'' (''AHD'') is an American dictionary of English published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969. Its creation was spurred by the controversy o ...
'' derives it from French ''hache'' from Latin ''haca'' or ''hic''. Anatoly Liberman
Anatoly Liberman (russian: Анато́лий Си́монович Либерма́н; born 10 March 1937) is a linguist, medievalist, etymologist, poet, translator of poetry (mainly from and into Russian), and literary critic.
Liberman is a pro ...
suggests a conflation of two obsolete orderings of the alphabet, one with ''H'' immediately followed by ''K'' and the other without any ''K'': reciting the former's ''..., H, K, L,...'' as when reinterpreted for the latter ''..., H, L,...'' would imply a pronunciation for ''H''.
Use in writing systems
English
In English, occurs as a single-letter grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...
(being either silent or representing the voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', b ...
() and in various digraphs, such as , , , or ), (silent, , , , or ), (), (), (), ( or ), (). The letter is silent in a syllable rime, as in ''ah'', ''ohm'', ''dahlia'', ''cheetah'', ''pooh-poohed'', as well as in certain other words (mostly of French origin) such as ''hour'', ''honest'', ''herb'' (in American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
but not British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
) and ''vehicle'' (in certain varieties of English). Initial 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 most regional dialects of England and Wales) it is often omitted in all words (see ''-dropping). It was formerly common for ''an'' rather than ''a'' to be used as the indefinite article before a word beginning with in an unstressed syllable, as in "an historian", but use of ''a'' is now more usual (see ). In English, The pronunciation of as /h/ can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. That is, when the phoneme /h/ precedes a vowel, /h/ may be realized as a voiceless version of the subsequent vowel. For example the word , /hɪt/ is realized as ̥ɪt H is the eighth most frequently used letter in the English language (after S, N, I, O, A, T, and E), with a frequency of about 4.2% in words. When ''h'' is placed after certain other consonants, it modifies their pronunciation in various ways, e.g. for ''ch'', ''gh'', ''ph'', ''sh'', and ''th''.
Other languages
In the German language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is als ...
, the name of the letter is pronounced . Following a vowel, it often silently indicates that the vowel is long: In the word ('heighten'), the second is mute for most speakers outside of Switzerland. In 1901, a spelling reform
A spelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change to spelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples a ...
eliminated the silent in nearly all instances of in native German words such as ''thun'' ('to do') or ''Thür'' ('door'). It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such as ('theater') and ('throne'), which continue to be spelled with even after the last German spelling reform.
In Spanish and Portuguese, ("" in Spanish, pronounced , or in Portuguese, pronounced or ) is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in ('son') and ('Hungarian'). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the sound . In words where the is derived from a Latin , it is still sometimes pronounced with the value in some regions of Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The t ...
, Extremadura
Extremadura (; ext, Estremaúra; pt, Estremadura; Fala: ''Extremaúra'') is an autonomous community of Spain. Its capital city is Mérida, and its largest city is Badajoz. Located in the central-western part of the Iberian Peninsula, it ...
, Canarias, Cantabria
Cantabria (, also , , Cantabrian: ) is an autonomous community in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a ''comunidad histórica'', a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. It is bordered on the east ...
, and the Americas. Some words beginning with or , such as es, label=none, hielo, lit=ice and es, label=none, huevo, lit=egg, were given an initial to avoid confusion between their initial semivowels and the consonants and . This is because and used to be considered variants of and respectively. also appears in the digraph , which represents in Spanish and northern Portugal, and in varieties that have merged both sounds (the latter originally represented by instead), such as most of the Portuguese language and some Spanish dialects, prominently Chilean Spanish
Chilean Spanish ( es, español chileno) is any of several varieties of the Spanish language spoken in most of Chile. Chilean Spanish dialects have distinctive pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and slang usages that differ from those of Stand ...
.
In French, the name of the letter is written as "ache" and pronounced . The French orthography classifies words that begin with this letter in two ways, one of which can affect the pronunciation, even though it is a silent letter either way. The ''H muet'', or "mute" , is considered as though the letter were not there at all, so for example the singular definite article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
''le'' or ''la'', which is elided
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
to ''l before a vowel, elides before an ''H muet'' followed by a vowel. For example, ''le + hébergement'' becomes ''l'hébergement'' ('the accommodation'). The other kind of is called ''h aspiré'' (" aspirated ''", though it is not normally aspirated phonetically), and does not allow elision or liaison
Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together.
Liaison or liaisons may refer to:
General usage
* Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship
* Collaboration
* Co-operation
Arts and entertainment
* Li ...
. 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 stop. Most words that begin with an ''H muet'' come from Latin (''honneur'', ''homme'') or from Greek through Latin (''hécatombe''), whereas most words beginning with an ''H aspiré'' come from Germanic (''harpe'', ''hareng'') or non-Indo-European languages (''harem'', ''hamac'', ''haricot''); in some cases, an orthographic was added to disambiguate the and semivowel pronunciations before the introduction of the distinction between the letters and : ''huit'' (from ''uit'', ultimately from Latin ''octo''), ''huître'' (from ''uistre'', ultimately from Greek through Latin ''ostrea'').
In Italian, has no phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
value. Its most important uses are in the digraphs 'ch' and 'gh' , as well as to differentiate the spellings of certain short words that are homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
s, for example some present tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
forms of the verb ''avere'' ('to have') (such as ''hanno'', 'they have', vs. ''anno'', 'year'), and in short interjections
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
(''oh'', ''ehi'').
Some languages, including Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
, Slovak, Hungarian, Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, and Estonian use as a breathy voiced glottal fricative , often as an allophone of otherwise voiceless in a voiced environment.
In Hungarian, the letter has no fewer than five pronunciations, with three additional uses as a productive and non-productive element of digraphs. The letter ''h'' may represent /h/ as in the name of the Székely town '' Hargita;'' intervocalically it represents /ɦ/ as in '' tehén''; it represents /x/ in the word '' doh''; it represents /ç/ in '' ihlet;'' and it is silent in '' cseh.'' As part of a digraph, it represents, in archaic spelling, /t͡ʃ/ with the letter ''c'' as in the name ''Széchenyi
Széchenyi or Széchényi is the name of a wealthy Hungarian noble family which produced many politicians, landowners and influential figures within Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is not to be confused with other Szécsényi family that went extinct ...
;'' it represents, again, with the letter ''c,'' /x/ in '' pech'' (which is pronounced ɛxː; in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, as in the name ''Beöthy'' which is pronounced øːti(without the intervening ''h,'' the name ''Beöty'' could be pronounced øːc; and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, as in the name ''Vargha,'' pronounced ɒrgɒ
In Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
and Belarusian, when written in the Latin alphabet, is also commonly used for , which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter .
In Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
, is not considered an independent letter, except for a very few non-native words, however placed after a consonant is known as a "séimhiú" and indicates lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...
of that consonant; began to replace the original form of a séimhiú, a dot placed above the consonant, after the introduction of typewriters.
In most dialects of Polish, both and the digraph always represent .
In Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, during the 20th century it was not used in the orthography of the Basque dialects in Spain but it marked an aspiration in the North-Eastern dialects. During the standardization of Basque in the 1970s, the compromise was reached that ''h'' would be accepted if it were the first consonant in a syllable. Hence, ''herri'' ("people") and ''etorri'' ("to come") were accepted instead of ''erri'' (Biscayan
Biscayan, sometimes Bizkaian ( eu, Bizkaiera, es, Vizcaíno) is a dialect of the Basque language spoken mainly in Biscay, one of the provinces of the Basque Country of Spain.
It is named as ''Western'' in the Basque dialects' classification ...
) and ''ethorri'' (Souletin
Souletin or Zuberoan ( eu, Zuberera) is the Basque dialect spoken in Soule, France. Souletin is marked by influences from Occitan (in particular the Béarnese dialect), especially in the lexicon. Another distinct characteristic is the use of v ...
). Speakers could pronounce the h or not. For the dialects lacking the aspiration, this meant a complication added to the standardized spelling.
Other systems
As a phonetic symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA), it is used mainly for the so-called aspirations (fricative or trills), and variations of the plain letter are used to represent two sounds: the lowercase form represents the voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', b ...
, and the small capital form represents the voiceless epiglottal fricative
The voiceless epiglottal or pharyngeal trill, or voiceless epiglottal fricative,John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) ''The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences'', 2nd ed., p 695. is a type of consonantal sound, use ...
(or trill). With a bar, minuscule is used for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative
The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the trans ...
. Specific to the IPA, a hooked is used for a voiced glottal fricative
The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phoneti ...
, and a superscript is used to represent aspiration.
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
*H with diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s: Ĥ ĥ Ȟ ȟ Ħ ħ Ḩ ḩ Ⱨ ⱨ ẖ ẖ Ḥ ḥ Ḣ ḣ Ḧ ḧ Ḫ ḫ ꞕ
The palatal hook () is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from ...
Ꜧ ꜧ
*IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
-specific symbols related to H:
* Superscript IPA symbols related to H: 𐞖 𐞕
*ꟸ
Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS) are a set of phonetic symbols used to transcribe disordered speech for what in speech pathology is known as "voice quality". This phrase is usually synonymous with phonation in phonetics, but in speech pathology encom ...
: Modifier letter capital H with stroke is used in VoQS to represent faucalized voice.
*ᴴ : Modifier letter H is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
*ₕ : Subscript small h was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
*ʰ : Modifier letter small h is used in Indo-European studies
*ʮ and ʯ : Turned H with fishhook and turned H with fishhook and tail are used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics
*Ƕ ƕ : Latin letter hwair, derived from a ligature of the digraph hv, and used to transliterate the Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter 𐍈 (which represented the sound [hʷ])
*Ⱶ ⱶ : Claudian letters
*Ꟶ ꟶ : Reversed half h used in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul
Ancestors, siblings, and descendants in other alphabets
*𐤇 : Phoenician alphabet, Semitic letter Heth
Heth, sometimes written Chet, but more accurately Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ḥēt 𐤇 , Hebrew Ḥēth , Aramaic Ḥēth , Syriac Ḥēṯ ܚ, Arabic Ḥā' , and Maltese Ħ, ħ.
Heth origin ...
, from which the following symbols derive
**Η η : Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
letter Eta
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
, from which the following symbols derive
***𐌇 : Old Italic script, Old Italic H, the ancestor of modern Latin H
**** : Runes, Runic letter haglaz, which is probably a descendant of Old Italic H
***Һ һ : Cyrillic letter Shha, which derives from Latin H
***И и : Cyrillic letter И, which derives from the Greek letter Eta
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
*** : Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter haal
Armenian letter ho (Հ)
Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations
* : Planck constant
*ℏ : reduced Planck constant
* : Blackboard bold capital H used in quaternion notation
Computing codes
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859, and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
See also
* American Sign Language grammar#Handshape, American Sign Language grammar
* List of Egyptian hieroglyphs#H
References
External links
*
*
Lubliner, Coby. 2008. "The Story of H."
(essay on origins and uses of the letter "h")
{{Latin script, H}
ISO basic Latin letters