H, or h, is the eighth letter in 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 / eɪ tʃ/, plural aitches), or regionally haitch / h eɪ tʃ/. [1] History Egyptian hieroglyph The letter H/ h (like F/ f, and O/ o representing [o], [oː] instead of [uə̯]) is found only in words of foreign origin (borrowings). Note that it represents the sound of IPA [x] (like German machen, ach), not (as in most other alphabets based on the Latin script) the sound of IPA [h]. The eighth letter of the Scottish Gaelic alphabet, written in the Latin script. It is preceded by g and followed by i. Its traditional name is uath ( “ hawthorn ” ).

Latin-script letters ) täht; A a, B b ( C c), D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p ( Q q), R r, S s, Š š, Z z, Ž ž, T t, U u, V v ( W w), Õ õ, Ä ä, Ö ö, Ü ü ( X x, Y y) The haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982, [5] and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers. Despite this increasing number, the pronunciation without the /h/ sound is still considered to be standard in England, although the pronunciation with /h/ is also attested as a legitimate variant. [2] In Northern Ireland, the pronunciation of the letter has been used as a shibboleth, with Catholics typically pronouncing it with the /h/ and Protestants pronouncing the letter without it. [6]Like most stories of the English language, the tale of the H involves scribes in England in the 1000s and 1100s. As the French influence on Middle English began, the letter h kept moving around, coming in and out of words. Take the word author. The word originally entered the language from French as autour, but around the 1500s, scribes started inserting the h and changed it into author. Scribes also put Hs on the beginning of words, even though the Hs remained silent, as in the words honest and historical. So today we often put the article an before words that start with a silent H, as in the phrase, “an honest Joe.” (Why do we capitalize letters in the first place? Find out.) Latin-script letters ) ittra; A a, B b, Ċ ċ, D d, E e, F f, Ġ ġ, G g, Għ għ, H h, Ħ ħ, I i, Ie ie, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, Q q, R r, S s, T t, U u, V v, W w, X x, Ż ż, Z z In French, the name of the letter is written as "ache" and pronounced /aʃ/. 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" ⟨h⟩, is considered as though the letter were not there at all, so 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 ⟨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 ⟨h⟩ was added to disambiguate the [v] and semivowel [ɥ] pronunciations before the introduction of the distinction between the letters ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩: huit (from uit, ultimately from Latin octo), huître (from uistre, ultimately from Greek through Latin ostrea).

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; it represents, again, with the letter c, /x/ in pech (which is pronounced [pɛxː]); in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, as in the name Beöthy which is pronounced [bøːti] (without the intervening h, the name Beöty could be pronounced [bøːc]); and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, as in the name Vargha, pronounced [vɒrgɒ]. Latin script letters) A a, B b, C c, Č č, D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, R r, S s, Š š, T t, U u, V v, Z z, Ž ž In Ukrainian and Belarusian, when written in the Latin alphabet, ⟨h⟩ is also commonly used for /ɦ/, which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter ⟨г⟩. In Italian, ⟨h⟩ has no phonological value. Its most important uses are in the digraphs 'ch' /k/ and 'gh' /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).

Subscript small h was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902 [13] Over time, some of the loaned Spanish words still spelled with the silent ⟨h⟩ are spoken with /h/ due to spelling pronunciation, as people are becoming less aware of the letter being silent. B in music ) : hin Bárczi, Géza and László Országh. A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (‘The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’, abbr.: ÉrtSz.). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959–1962. Fifthed., 1992: →ISBN In English, ⟨h⟩ occurs as a single-letter grapheme (being either silent or representing the voiceless glottal fricative ( / h/) and in various digraphs, such as ⟨ch⟩ / tʃ/, / ʃ/, / k/, or / x/), ⟨gh⟩ (silent, /ɡ/, /k/, /p/, or /f/), ⟨ph⟩ ( /f/), ⟨rh⟩ ( /r/), ⟨sh⟩ ( / ʃ/), ⟨th⟩ ( / θ/ or / ð/), ⟨wh⟩ ( / hw/ [8]). 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 but not British English) and vehicle (in certain varieties of English). Initial /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 (see ' ⟨h⟩'-dropping). It was formerly common for an rather than a to be used as the indefinite article before a word beginning with /h/ in an unstressed syllable, as in "an historian", but use of a is now more usual (see English articles §Indefinite article). In English, The pronunciation of ⟨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 ⟨hit⟩, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt]. [9] 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. [ citation needed] When h is placed after certain other consonants, it modifies their pronunciation in various ways, e.g. for ch, gh, ph, sh, and th. obsoleteexcept in given names ) used in the Hellenistic digraphs th, ph and rh thesouro (now tesouro), phalange (now falange), rheumatismo (now reumatismo), Cynthia (alongside Cíntia) ― treasure, phalanx, rheumatism, Cynthia

The seventh letter of the Tagalog alphabet( Abakada alphabet), called ha and written in the Latin script. Latin-script letters ) bókstavur; A a, Á á, B b, D d, Ð ð, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, Í í, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, Ó ó, P p, R r, S s, T t, U u, Ú ú, V v, Y y, Ý ý, Æ æ, Ø ø

h.

Phonotactically, word-initial h now generally behaves like a vowel, allowing contractions such as m’ hemm x [mɛːmʃ]. However, word-internal h still behaves like a (virtual) consonant. Compare for example qablu [ˈʔablʊ] with qabilha [ʔaˈbɪla], which latter is formed as though the l were followed by a consonant. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (27 January 2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017 . Retrieved 24 March 2018. Latin-script letters ) A a, B b, C c ( Ç ç), D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, Ñ ñ, O o, P p, Q q, R r, S s, T t, U u ( Ü ü), V v, W w, X x, Y y, Z z Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (20 September 2001). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017 . Retrieved 24 March 2018. h, eighth letter of the alphabet. It corresponds to Semitic cheth and Greek eta (Η). It may derive from an early symbol for fence. In the early Greek alphabets a form with three horizontal bars and the simpler form H were both widely distributed. In Etruscan the prevailing form was similar to the early Greek form, and the same or a similar form occurs in very early Latin inscriptions, but the form H came into general use in Latin, either from the Chalcidic Greek alphabet of Cumae or from some other source. The modern majuscule H is derived directly from the Latin. The cursive Latin form resembled a stylized version of the modern minuscule h, as did the uncial form. Both of these forms result from writing the letter without taking the pen from the paper, the right-hand vertical bar being thus foreshortened and the horizontal stroke rounded. From these came the Carolingian form as well as the modern minuscule h.

Everson, Michael; etal. (20 March 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 February 2018 . Retrieved 24 March 2018. West, Andrew; Everson, Michael (25 March 2019). "L2/19-092: Proposal to encode Latin Letter Reversed Half H" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 June 2019 . Retrieved 17 March 2020.From Proto-Slavic *kъ 'to', which is itself probably from Proto-Indo-European *k u̯u 'where'. This form is a spirantization of k, which appeared to ease the pronunciation. Some languages, including Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian use ⟨h⟩ as a breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ], often as an allophone of otherwise voiceless /h/ in a voiced environment. An auction of classic, collector and performance motorcars to be held in the beautiful surrounds of the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, Derbyshire.