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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 the o ...
, 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 com ...
,'' 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 originall ...
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 transc ...
(). 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 forms ...
, 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'', but ...
. In this context, the letter eta is also known as
Heta Heta is a conventional name for the historical Greek alphabet letter Eta (Η) and several of its variants, when used in their original function of denoting the consonant . Overview The letter Η had been adopted by Greek from the Phoenician lett ...
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 Italy, 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, ...
, the letter Heta of the
Euboean alphabet 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 forms ...
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-west o ...
, 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 fam ...
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 ''s ...
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 a ...
, and occurs sporadically in various other dialects. The perceived name of the letter affects the choice of
indefinite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
before
initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s beginning with H: for example "an H-bomb" or "a H-bomb". The pronunciation may be a
hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
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 passwor ...
, 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 com ...
'' 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 English, American dictionary of English published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969. ...
'' 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 ''graphemics' ...
(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'', but ...
() and in various digraphs, such as , , , or ), (silent, , , , or ), (), (), (), ( or ), (). The letter is silent in a
syllable rime A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, 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 word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...
s 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 In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
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 languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...
, 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 ar ...
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 communities of Spain, 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 ...
,
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 sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...
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 transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(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'', but ...
, 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 transc ...
. 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 ''phonetic ...
, 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
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 *
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 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 ...
to represent
faucalized voice Faucalized voice, also called hollow voice or yawny voice, is a vocal quality of speech production characterized by the vertical expansion of the pharyngeal cavity due to the lowering of the larynx. It is termed ''faucalized'' because of the str ...
. *ᴴ : Modifier letter H is used in the
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...
*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 Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
* 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 Hwair (also , , ) is the name of , the Gothic letter expressing the or sound (reflected in English by the inverted '' wh''-spelling for ). Hwair is also the name of the Latin ligature (capital ) used to transcribe Gothic. Name The name of the ...
, derived from a ligature of the digraph hv, and used to transliterate the
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter 𐍈 (which represented the sound ʷ *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 : 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 originall ...
, 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 H, the ancestor of modern Latin H **** :
Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
letter
haglaz *Haglaz or *Hagalaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the ''h''-rune , meaning "hail" (the precipitation). In the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, it is continued as ''hægl'', and, in the Younger Futhark, as ''hagall''. The corresponding Goth ...
, which is probably a descendant of Old Italic H ***Һ һ :
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
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 Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter haal Armenian letter ho (Հ)


Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations

* :
Planck constant The Planck constant, or Planck's constant, is a fundamental physical constant of foundational importance in quantum mechanics. The constant gives the relationship between the energy of a photon and its frequency, and by the mass-energy equivale ...
*ℏ :
reduced Planck constant The Planck constant, or Planck's constant, is a fundamental physical constant of foundational importance in quantum mechanics. The constant gives the relationship between the energy of a photon and its frequency, and by the mass-energy equivale ...
*\mathbb :
Blackboard bold Blackboard bold is a typeface style that is often used for certain symbols in mathematical texts, in which certain lines of the symbol (usually vertical or near-vertical lines) are doubled. The symbols usually denote number sets. One way of pro ...
capital H used in
quaternion In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quatern ...
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 The grammar of American Sign Language (ASL) is the best studied of any sign language, though research is still in its infancy, dating back only to William Stokoe in the 1960s. Morphology ASL morphology is to a large extent iconic. This show ...
* 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