H

Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:About Template:Pp-semi-indef Template:Pp-move Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox grapheme Template:Latin alphabet sidebar

H, or h, is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, including the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is aitch (pronounced Template:IPAc-en, plural aitches), or regionally haitch (pronounced Template:IPAc-en, plural haitches).<ref name=mw>"H" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "aitch" or "haitch", op. cit.</ref>

Name

English

For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as Template:IPAc-en and spelled "aitch"<ref name=mw/> or occasionally "eitch". The pronunciation Template:IPAc-en and the associated spelling "haitch" are often considered to be h-adding and are considered non-standard in England.<ref name="how do you pronounce H"/> It is, however, a feature of Hiberno-English,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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 Template:IPA 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.<ref>Todd, L. & Hancock I.: "International English Ipod", page 254. Routledge, 1990.</ref>

The haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982,<ref>John C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, page 360, Pearson, Harlow, 2008</ref> and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers. Despite this increasing number, the pronunciation without the Template:IPA sound is still considered standard in England, although the pronunciation with Template:IPA is also attested as a legitimate variant.<ref name="how do you pronounce H">Template:Cite news</ref> In Northern Ireland, the pronunciation of the letter has been used as a shibboleth, with Catholics typically pronouncing it with the Template:IPA and Protestants pronouncing the letter without it.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The Oxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was Template:IPA in Latin; this became Template:IPA in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French Template:IPA, and by Middle English was pronounced Template:IPA. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language derives it 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 any K: reciting the former's ..., H, K, L,... as Template:IPA when reinterpreted for the latter ..., H, L,... would imply a pronunciation of Template:IPA for H.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Other languages

French: Template:Lang Template:IPA
German: Template:Lang Template:IPA
Portuguese: Template:Lang Template:IPA
Spanish: Template:Lang Template:IPA
Italian: Template:Lang Template:IPA
Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: hå [[[:Template:IPA]]]
Polish: ha Template:IPA
Czech: ha Template:IPA

History

Egyptian hieroglyph fence	Proto-Sinaitic ḥaṣr	Phoenician Heth	Western Greek Heta	Etruscan H	Latin H
<hiero>N24</hiero>	File:Proto-semiticH-01.svg	File:PhoenicianH-01.svg	File:Greek Eta archaic.svgFile:Greek Eta 2-bars.svg File:Greek Eta square-2-bars.svgFile:Greek Eta diagonal.svg	File:EtruscanH-01.svg File:EtruscanH-02.svg	Latin H

The original Semitic letter Heth most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (Template:IPA link). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.

The Greek Eta 'Η' in archaic Greek alphabets, before coming to represent a long vowel, Template:IPA, still represented a similar sound, the voiceless glottal fricative Template:IPA. 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 Template:IPA.

While Etruscan and Latin had Template:IPA as a phoneme, almost all Romance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the Template:IPA phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and Spanish developed a secondary Template:IPA from Template:IPA, before losing it again; various Spanish dialects have developed Template:IPA as an allophone of Template:IPA or Template:IPA in most Spanish-speaking countries, and various dialects of Portuguese use it as an allophone of Template:IPA. 'H' is also used in many spelling systems in digraphs and trigraphs, such as 'ch', which represents Template:IPA in Spanish, Galician, and Old Portuguese; Template:IPA in French and modern Portuguese; Template:IPA in Italian and French.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of Template:Angbr by language
Orthography	Phonemes
Template:Nwr (Pinyin)	Template:IPAslink
Czech	Template:IPAslink
English	Template:IPAslink, silent
French	silent
German	Template:IPAslink, silent
Polish	Template:IPAslink
Portuguese	silent
Spanish	silent
Turkish	Template:IPAslink

English

In English, Template:Angbr occurs as a single-letter grapheme (being either silent or representing the voiceless glottal fricative Template:IPAslink and in various digraphs:

Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, or Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr being silent or representing Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink, or Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
Template:Angbr representing Template:IPAslink<ref>In many dialects, Template:IPA and Template:IPA have merged</ref> or Template:IPAslink

The letter is silent in a syllable rime, as in ah, ohm, dahlia, cheetah, and pooh-poohed, as well as in certain other words (mostly of French origin) such as hour, honest, herb (in American but not British English) and vehicle (in certain varieties of English). Initial Template:IPA 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. It was formerly common for an rather than a to be used as the indefinite article before a word beginning with Template:IPA in an unstressed syllable, as in "an historian", but the use of a is now more usual.

In English, the pronunciation of Template:Angbr 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 Template:Angbr, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt].<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 6.1% in words.<ref name=micka>Template:Cite web</ref>

Other languages

In German, following a vowel, it often silently indicates that the vowel is long: In the word Template:Lang ('heighten'), the second Template:Angbr is mute for most speakers outside of Switzerland. In 1901, a spelling reform eliminated the silent Template:Angbr in nearly all instances of Template:Angbr in native German words such as thun ('to do') or Thür ('door'). It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such as Template:Lang ('theater') and Template:Lang ('throne'), which continue to be spelled with Template:Angbr even after the last German spelling reform.

In Spanish and Portuguese, Template:Angbr is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in Template:Lang Template:IPA ('son') and Template:Lang Template:IPA ('Hungarian'). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the sound Template:IPA. In words where the Template:Angbr is derived from a Latin Template:IPA, it is still sometimes pronounced with the value Template:IPA in some regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, Canarias, Cantabria, and the Americas. Some words beginning with Template:IPA or Template:IPA, such as Template:Langx and Template:Langx, were given an initial Template:Angbr to avoid confusion between their initial semivowels and the consonants Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr. This is because Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr used to be considered variants of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr respectively. Template:Angbr also appears in the digraph Template:Angbr, which represents Template:IPAslink in Spanish and northern Portugal, and Template:IPAslink in varieties that have merged both sounds (the latter originally represented by Template:Angbr instead), such as most of the Portuguese language and some Spanish dialects, prominently Chilean Spanish.

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" Template:Angbr, is considered as though the letter were not there at all. For example, the singular definite article le or la, which is elided 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 Template:Angbr is called h aspiré ("[[aspirated h|aspirated 'Template:Angbr']]", 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 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 Template:Angbr was added to disambiguate the Template:IPA and semivowel Template:IPA pronunciations before the introduction of the distinction between the letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr: huit (from uit, ultimately from Latin octo), huître (from uistre, ultimately from Greek through Latin ostrea).

In Italian, Template:Angbr has no phonological value. Its most important uses are in the digraphs 'ch' Template:IPA and 'gh' Template:IPA, as well as to differentiate the spellings of certain short words that are homophones, for example, some present tense forms of the verb avere ('to have') (such as hanno, 'they have', vs. anno, 'year'), and in short interjections (oh, ehi).

Some languages, including Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, use Template:Angbr as a breathy voiced glottal fricative Template:IPA, often as an allophone of otherwise voiceless Template:IPA in a voiced environment.

In Hungarian, the letter represents a phoneme Template:IPAslink with four allophones: Template:IPAblink before vowels, Template:IPAblink between two vowels, Template:IPAblink after front vowels, and Template:IPAblink word-finally after back vowels. It can also be a silent word-finally after back vowels. It is Template:IPAblink when geminated. In archaic spelling, the digraph Template:Angbr represents Template:IPAslink (as in the name Széchenyi) and Template:IPAslink (as in pech, which is pronounced Template:IPA); in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, as in the name Beöthy, which is pronounced Template:IPA (without the intervening h, the name Beöty could be pronounced Template:IPA); and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, as in the name Vargha, pronounced Template:IPA.

In Ukrainian and Belarusian, when written in the Latin alphabet, Template:Angbr is also commonly used for Template:IPA, which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter Template:Angbr.

In Irish, Template:Angbr is not considered an independent letter, except for a very few non-native words; however, Template:Angbr placed after a consonant is known as a "séimhiú" and indicates the lenition of that consonant; Template:Angbr 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 Template:Angbr and the digraph Template:Angbr always represent Template:IPA.

In Basque, 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, a 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) and ethorri (Souletin).

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 two sounds: the lowercase form Template:IPAalink represents the voiceless glottal fricative, and the small capital form Template:IPAalink represents the voiceless epiglottal fricative (or trill). With a bar, minuscule Template:IPAalink is used for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Specific to the IPA, a hooked Template:IPAalink is used for a voiced glottal fricative, and a superscript Template:IPAalink is used to represent aspiration.

Other uses

Template:Main article

Unit prefix h, meaning 100 times.

Related characters

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: Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:IPA link
Superscript IPA symbols related to H:<ref name="L220252">Template:Cite web</ref> 𐞖 𐞕
ꟸ: Modifier letter capital H with stroke is used in VoQS to represent faucalized voice.
Template:Not a typo : Modifier letter H is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Not a typo : Subscript small h was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Not a typo : Modifier letter small h is used in Indo-European studies<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
ʮ and ʯ : Turned H with fishhook and turned H with fishhook and tail are used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Not a typo : Latin letter hwair, derived from a ligature of the digraph hv, and used to transliterate the Gothic letter 𐍈 (which represented the sound [hʷ])
Ⱶ ⱶ : Claudian letters<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Ꟶ ꟶ : Reversed half h used in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Ancestors, siblings, and descendants in other alphabets

𐤇 : Semitic letter Heth, from which the following symbols derive:
- Η η : Greek letter Eta, from which the following symbols derive:
  - 𐌇 : Old Italic H, the ancestor of modern Latin H
    - Template:Script : 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
  - Template:Script : Gothic letter haal
  - Armenian letter ho (Հ)Template:Citation needed