Editing H (section)

==History==
{| class="wikitable"
! Egyptian hieroglyph<br>fence
! Proto-Sinaitic<br>ḥaṣr
! Phoenician<br>[[Heth]]
! Western Greek<br>[[Heta]]
! Etruscan<br>[[𐌇|H]]
! Latin<br>H
|--- align=center
|<hiero>N24</hiero>
|[[File:Proto-semiticH-01.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x30px]]
|[[File:PhoenicianH-01.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x30px]]
|[[File:Greek Eta archaic.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]][[File:Greek Eta 2-bars.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]]<br>[[File:Greek Eta square-2-bars.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]][[File:Greek Eta diagonal.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]]
|[[File:EtruscanH-01.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]]<br/>[[File:EtruscanH-02.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x20px]]
|[[File:Capitalis monumentalis H.svg|class=skin-invert-image|x30px|Latin H]]
|}
The original [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] letter [[Heth]] most likely represented the [[voiceless pharyngeal fricative]] ({{IPA link|ħ}}). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.

The [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] [[Eta (letter)|Eta]] 'Η' in [[archaic Greek alphabets#Eta and /h/|archaic Greek alphabets]], before coming  to represent a long vowel, {{IPA|/ɛː/}}, still represented a similar sound, the [[voiceless glottal fricative]] {{IPA|/h/}}. In this context, the letter eta is also known as ''[[Heta]]''. Thus, in the [[Old Italic alphabets]], the letter Heta of the [[Euboean alphabet]] was adopted with its original sound value {{IPA|/h/}}.

While [[Etruscan language|Etruscan]] and [[Latin]] had {{IPA|/h/}} as a [[phoneme]], almost all [[Romance languages]] lost the sound—[[Romanian language|Romanian]] later re-borrowed the {{IPA|/h/}} phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and [[Spanish language|Spanish]] developed a secondary {{IPA|/h/}} from {{IPA|/f/}}, before losing it again; various Spanish dialects have developed {{IPA|[h]}} as an [[allophone]] of {{IPA|/s/}} or {{IPA|/x/}} in most Spanish-speaking countries, and various dialects of [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] use it as an allophone of {{IPA|/ʁ/}}. 'H' is also used in many spelling systems in [[digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] and [[trigraph (orthography)|trigraphs]], such as 'ch', which represents {{IPA|/tʃ/}} in Spanish, [[Galician language|Galician]], and [[Old Portuguese]]; {{IPA|/ʃ/}} in [[French language|French]] and [[modern Portuguese]]; {{IPA|/k/}} in [[Italian language|Italian]] and French.