H#Name

For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as {{IPAc-en|eɪ|tʃ}} and spelled "aitch" or occasionally "eitch". The pronunciation {{IPAc-en|h|eɪ|tʃ}} and the associated spelling "haitch" are often considered to be h-adding and are considered non-standard in England. It is, however, a feature of Hiberno-English,{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uPo0oB19gDUC |title=A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English |first=T. P. |last=Dolan |date=1 January 2004 |publisher=Gill & Macmillan Ltd |access-date=3 September 2016 |via=Google Books |isbn=9780717135356 |archive-date=17 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170117125616/https://books.google.com/books?id=uPo0oB19gDUC |url-status=live }} 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 {{IPA|/heɪtʃ/}} 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.Todd, L. & Hancock I.: "International English Ipod", page 254. Routledge, 1990.

The haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982,John C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, page 360, Pearson, Harlow, 2008 and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers. Despite this increasing number, the pronunciation without the {{IPA|/h/}} sound is still considered standard in England, although the pronunciation with {{IPA|/h/}} is also attested as a legitimate variant.{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11642588 |title='Haitch' or 'aitch'? How do you pronounce 'H'? |work=BBC News |access-date=3 September 2016 |archive-date=12 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161012035400/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11642588 |url-status=live }} In Northern Ireland, the pronunciation of the letter has been used as a shibboleth, with Catholics typically pronouncing it with the {{IPA|/h/}} and Protestants pronouncing the letter without it.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uPo0oB19gDUC|title=A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English|first=T. P.|last=Dolan|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Gill & Macmillan Ltd|isbn=9780717135356}}

Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The Oxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was {{IPA|la|ˈaha|}} in Latin; this became {{IPA|la|ˈaka|}} in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French {{IPA|ang|atʃ|}}, and by Middle English was pronounced {{IPA|enm|aːtʃ|}}. 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 {{IPA|[...(h)a ka el ...]}} when reinterpreted for the latter ..., H, L,... would imply a pronunciation of {{IPA|[(h)a ka]}} for H.{{cite web |url=https://blog.oup.com/2013/08/alphabet-soup-letter-h-y-origin-etymology/ |title=Alphabet soup, part 2: H and Y |last=Liberman |first=Anatoly |date=7 August 2013 |work=Oxford Etymologist |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=3 October 2013 |archive-date=4 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004223650/http://blog.oup.com/2013/08/alphabet-soup-letter-h-y-origin-etymology/ |url-status=live }}

• French: {{lang|fr|ache}} {{IPA|fr|aʃ|}}
• German: {{lang|de|ha}} {{IPA|de|haː|}}
• Portuguese: {{lang|pt|agá}} {{IPA|pt|ɐˈɣa, aˈɡa|}}
• Spanish: {{lang|es|hache}} {{IPA|es|'atʃe|}}
• Italian: {{lang|it|acca}} {{IPA|it|ˈakːa|}}
• Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: hå [{{IPA|ˈho|}}]
• Polish: ha {{IPA|pl|ˈxa|}}
• Czech: ha {{IPA|cs|ˈɦa|}}

The original 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 Eta 'Η' in 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 and Latin had {{IPA|/h/}} as a phoneme, almost all Romance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the {{IPA|/h/}} phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and 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 use it as an allophone of {{IPA|/ʁ/}}. 'H' is also used in many spelling systems in digraphs and trigraphs, such as 'ch', which represents {{IPA|/tʃ/}} in Spanish, Galician, and Old Portuguese; {{IPA|/ʃ/}} in French and modern Portuguese; {{IPA|/k/}} in Italian and French.

In English, {{angbr|h}} occurs as a single-letter grapheme (being either silent or representing the voiceless glottal fricative {{IPAslink|h}} and in various digraphs:

• {{angbr|ch}} representing {{IPAslink|tʃ}}, {{IPAslink|ʃ}}, {{IPAslink|k}}, or {{IPAslink|x}}
• {{angbr|gh}} being silent or representing {{IPAslink|ɡ}}, {{IPAslink|k}}, {{IPAslink|p}}, or {{IPAslink|f}}
• {{angbr|ph}} representing {{IPAslink|f}}
• {{angbr|rh}} representing {{IPAslink|r}}
• {{angbr|sh}} representing {{IPAslink|ʃ}}
• {{angbr|th}} representing {{IPAslink|θ}} or {{IPAslink|ð}}
• {{angbr|wh}} representing {{IPAslink|hw}}In many dialects, {{IPA|/hw/}} and {{IPA|/w/}} have merged or {{IPAslink|h}}

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 {{IPA|/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 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 {{IPA|/h/}} in an unstressed syllable, as in "an historian", but the use of a is now more usual.

In English, the pronunciation of {{angbr|h}} 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 {{angbr|hit}}, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt].{{cite web |url=https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4834/why-is-h-called-voiceless-vowel-phonetically-and-h-consonant-phonologically/4836 |title=phonology - Why is /h/ called voiceless vowel phonetically, and /h/ consonant phonologically? |website=Linguistics Stack Exchange |access-date=2019-05-05 |archive-date=5 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505190530/https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4834/why-is-h-called-voiceless-vowel-phonetically-and-h-consonant-phonologically/4836 |url-status=live }}

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.{{cite web |last=Mička |first=Pavel |title=Letter frequency (English) |url=http://en.algoritmy.net/article/40379/Letter-frequency-English |website=Algoritmy.net |access-date=13 November 2024 |archive-date=4 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210304152631/http://en.algoritmy.net/article/40379/Letter-frequency-English |url-status=live|quote=Source is Leland, Robert. Cryptological mathematics. [s.l.] : The Mathematical Association of America, 2000. 199 p. ISBN 0-88385-719-7 }}

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

In Spanish and Portuguese, {{angbr|h}} is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in {{Lang|es|hijo}} {{IPA|es|ˈixo|}} ('son') and {{Lang|pt|húngaro}} {{IPA|pt|ˈũɡaɾu|}} ('Hungarian'). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the sound {{IPA|/h/}}. In words where the {{Angbr|h}} is derived from a Latin {{IPA|/f/}}, it is still sometimes pronounced with the value {{IPA|[h]}} in some regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, Canarias, Cantabria, and the Americas. Some words beginning with {{IPA|[je]}} or {{IPA|[we]}}, such as {{langx|es|label=none|hielo|lit=ice}} and {{langx|es|label=none|huevo|lit=egg}}, were given an initial {{angbr|h|}} to avoid confusion between their initial semivowels and the consonants {{angbr|j}} and {{angbr|v}}. This is because {{angbr|j}} and {{angbr|v}} used to be considered variants of {{angbr|i}} and {{angbr|u}} respectively. {{angbr|h}} also appears in the digraph {{angbr|ch}}, which represents {{IPAslink|tʃ}} in Spanish and northern Portugal, and {{IPAslink|ʃ}} in varieties that have merged both sounds (the latter originally represented by {{angbr|x}} 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" {{angbr|h}}, 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 {{angbr|h}} is called 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 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 {{angbr|h}} was added to disambiguate the {{IPA|[v]}} and semivowel {{IPA|[ɥ]}} pronunciations before the introduction of the distinction between the letters {{angbr|v}} and {{angbr|u}}: huit (from uit, ultimately from Latin octo), huître (from uistre, ultimately from Greek through Latin ostrea).

In Italian, {{angbr|h}} has no phonological value. Its most important uses are in the digraphs 'ch' {{IPA|/k/}} and 'gh' {{IPA|/ɡ/}}, 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 {{angbr|h}} as a breathy voiced glottal fricative {{IPA|[ɦ]}}, often as an allophone of otherwise voiceless {{IPA|/h/}} in a voiced environment.

In Hungarian, the letter represents a phoneme {{IPAslink|h}} with four allophones: {{IPAblink|h}} before vowels, {{IPAblink|ɦ}} between two vowels, {{IPAblink|ç}} after front vowels, and {{IPAblink|x}} word-finally after back vowels. It can also be a silent word-finally after back vowels. It is {{IPAblink|xː}} when geminated. In archaic spelling, the digraph {{angbr|ch}} represents {{IPAslink|t͡ʃ}} (as in the name Széchenyi) and {{IPAslink|h}} (as in pech, which is pronounced {{IPA|[pɛxː]}}); in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, as in the name Beöthy, which is pronounced {{IPA|[bøːti]}} (without the intervening h, the name Beöty could be pronounced {{IPA|[bøːc]}}); and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, as in the name Vargha, pronounced {{IPA|[vɒrgɒ]}}.

In Ukrainian and Belarusian, when written in the Latin alphabet, {{angbr|h}} is also commonly used for {{IPA|/ɦ/}}, which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter {{angbr|г}}.

In Irish, {{angbr|h}} is not considered an independent letter, except for a very few non-native words; however, {{angbr|h}} placed after a consonant is known as a "séimhiú" and indicates the lenition of that consonant; {{angbr|h}} 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 {{angbr|h}} and the digraph {{angbr|ch}} always represent {{IPA|/x/}}.

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).

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 {{IPAalink|h}} represents the voiceless glottal fricative, and the small capital form {{IPAalink|ʜ}} represents the voiceless epiglottal fricative (or trill). With a bar, minuscule {{IPAalink|ħ}} is used for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Specific to the IPA, a hooked {{IPAalink|ɦ}} is used for a voiced glottal fricative, and a superscript {{IPAalink|ʰ}} is used to represent aspiration.

{{main article|H (disambiguation)}}

• Unit prefix h, meaning 100 times.

• 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: {{IPA link|ʜ}} {{IPA link|ɦ}} {{IPA link|ʰ}} {{IPA link|ʱ}} {{IPA link|ɥ}} {{IPA link|ᶣ}}{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.pdf |title=L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS |date=2004-04-19 |first=Peter |last=Constable |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011014355/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.pdf |url-status=live }} {{IPA link|ɧ}}
• Superscript IPA symbols related to H:{{Cite web|title=L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20252r-mod-ipa-a.pdf|date=2020-11-08|first1=Kirk|last1=Miller|first2=Michael|last2=Ashby}} 𐞖 𐞕
• ꟸ: Modifier letter capital H with stroke is used in VoQS to represent faucalized voice.
• {{not a typo|ᴴ}} : Modifier letter H is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-phonetic.pdf |title=L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS |date=2002-03-20 |first1=Michael |last1=Everson |author-link1=Michael Everson |display-authors=etal |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=19 February 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180219081033/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-phonetic.pdf |url-status=live }}
• {{not a typo|ₕ}} : Subscript small h was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09028-n3571-upa-additions.pdf |title=L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet |date=2009-01-27 |first1=Klaas |last1=Ruppel |first2=Tero |last2=Aalto |first3=Michael |last3=Everson |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011014359/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09028-n3571-upa-additions.pdf |url-status=live }}
• {{not a typo|ʰ}} : Modifier letter small h is used in Indo-European studies{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04191-n2788-laryngeals.pdf |title=L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS |date=2004-06-07 |first1=Deborah |last1=Anderson |first2=Michael |last2=Everson |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011014402/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04191-n2788-laryngeals.pdf |url-status=live }}
• ʮ and ʯ : Turned H with fishhook and turned H with fishhook and tail are used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01347-n2366r.pdf |title=L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS |date=2001-09-20 |first1=Richard |last1=Cook |first2=Michael |last2=Everson |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011014401/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01347-n2366r.pdf |url-status=live }}
• {{not a typo|Ƕ ƕ}} : 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{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2005/05193r2-n2960r2-claudian.pdf |title=L2/05-193R2: Proposal to add Claudian Latin letters to the UCS |date=2005-08-12 |first=Michael |last=Everson |access-date=24 March 2018 |archive-date=14 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190614223725/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2005/05193r2-n2960r2-claudian.pdf |url-status=live }}
• Ꟶ ꟶ : Reversed half h used in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19092-n5039-reversed-half-h.pdf |title=L2/19-092: Proposal to encode Latin Letter Reversed Half H |date=2019-03-25 |first1=Andrew |last1=West |first2=Michael |last2=Everson |access-date=17 March 2020 |archive-date=13 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190613190240/http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19092-n5039-reversed-half-h.pdf |url-status=live }}

• 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
• {{Script|Runr|ᚺ, ᚻ}} : 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
• {{Script|Goth|𐌷}} : Gothic letter haal
• Armenian letter ho (Հ){{citation needed|date=June 2023}}

• {{math|h}} : Planck constant
• ℏ : reduced Planck constant
• $\backslash mathbb\{H\}$ : Blackboard bold capital H used in quaternion notation

{{charmap|0048|0068|FF28|FF48

| name1 = Latin Capital Letter H

| name2 = Latin Small Letter H

| name3 = FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H

| name4 = FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER H

| map1 = EBCDIC family

| map1char1 = C8

| map1char2 = 88

| map2 = ASCII ¹

| map2char1 = 48

| map2char2 = 68

}}

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

{{Letter other reps

|NATO=Hotel

|Morse=····

|Character=H8

|Braille=⠓

|fingerspelling=H

}}

{{clear}}

• Handshape
• American Sign Language grammar
• List of Egyptian hieroglyphs#H

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{EB1911 poster|H}}

{{Spoken Wikipedia|date=2021-04-03|En-H-article.ogg}}

• {{Commons-inline}}
• {{Wiktionary-inline|H}}
• {{Wiktionary-inline|h}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20141014234828/http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~coby/essays/h.htm Lubliner, Coby. 2008. "The Story of H."] (essay on origins and uses of the letter "h")

{{Latin script|H|}}

Category:ISO basic Latin letters