H

The letter H (minuscule: h) is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet, which is used in the modern English alphabet and many other languages around the world. In English, its name is "aitch" (pronounced /eɪtʃ/), though in some regions it is called "haitch" (pronounced /heɪtʃ/).

Letters like H are important because they help us write and read words. Without letters, we wouldn't be able to share stories, learn new things, or communicate with each other in written form. The letter H appears in many everyday words, such as "house," "happy," and "help." It plays a key role in building the vocabulary we use each day.

Name

For most English speakers, the name for the letter H is said as "aitch." Some people, especially in parts of Ireland, say it as "haitch." This difference can even show where someone comes from or their family background.

Different languages have their own ways to say the letter H. For example, in French it is called "ache," in German "ha," and in Spanish "hache." Each language has its special pronunciation.

History

The letter H started as an old letter called Heth in Semitic languages. It likely looked like a fence or a post and made a soft breathing sound.

Later, the Greeks used a letter called Eta, which also made a soft breathing sound before it began to stand for a long vowel. This letter was passed down through many languages. In Etruscan and Latin, the letter H kept its soft breathing sound, but most Romance languages later lost this sound. Some languages, like Romanian, got the sound back from nearby languages.

Today, H is often used together with other letters to make new sounds in many languages. For example, in Spanish, Galician, and old Portuguese, "ch" makes a "ch" sound. In French and modern Portuguese, it makes a "sh" sound. In Italian and French, it can also help make a "k" sound.

Use in writing systems

English

In English, the letter h can be silent or make the sound /h/. It is part of many letter pairs, like ch (making sounds like /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /k/, or /x/), gh, ph, rh, sh, th, and wh.

The letter h is silent in words like ah, ohm, dahlia, cheetah, and pooh-poohed. It is also silent in words like hour, honest, herb, and vehicle in American English. Sometimes, the sound /h/ is not pronounced at the start of words like had or he.

H is the eighth most common letter in English, used in about 6.1% of all words.

Other languages

In German, h often shows that a vowel is long, like in erhöhen (meaning "heighten"). Old German words like thun ("to do") no longer use h, but words from Greek, like Theater ("theater"), still do.

In Spanish and Portuguese, h is usually silent, as in hijo ("son") and húngaro ("Hungarian"). In some areas, it can still make the /h/ sound.

French uses h in two ways: h muet (silent, like in l'hébergement, meaning "the accommodation") and h aspiré (which keeps the article le, like in le homard, meaning "the lobster").

In Italian, h helps make sounds like ch (/k/) and gh (/ɡ/) and separates words that sound alike, like hanno ("they have") and anno ("year").

Some languages, like Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, use h to make a soft breathing sound. In Hungarian, h can change its sound depending on its place in a word.

In Ukrainian and Belarusian, h can stand for the sound /ɦ/ when using the Latin alphabet.

Irish uses h after consonants to show a change in sound, called "lenition."

In Polish, h and ch usually make the /x/ sound.

Basque started using h in the 1970s to show aspiration in some dialects.

Other uses

The letter h is also used as a unit prefix, where it stands for 100 times larger.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

The letter H has many related forms and symbols. Some versions of H include special marks called diacritics, such as Ĥ ĥ, Ȟ ȟ, and Ħ ħ. In sound studies, symbols like ʜ and ɦ are used to show different ways H can sound.

Special forms of H are used in different kinds of writing. For example, ᴴ is used in a special alphabet for Uralic languages, and ₕ was used in older times for the same purpose. There are also turned versions of H, like ʮ and ʯ, used when studying languages from China and Tibet.

Ancestors, siblings, and descendants in other alphabets

The letter H came from an ancient symbol called Heth used in Semitic writing. This led to the Greek letter Eta, which then influenced many other letters. For example, Old Italic H is the ancestor of today’s Latin H. From there, it inspired letters in Runic writing, like haglaz, and in Cyrillic writing, like Shha.

Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations

Some important symbols come from H. The lowercase h stands for the Planck constant in physics. The symbol ℏ represents the reduced Planck constant. In math, the blackboard bold capital H is used in quaternion notation.

Other representations

The letter H is used in many different ways in computing and technology. It is part of many encoding systems like ASCII, DOS, Windows, ISO-8859, and Macintosh.

Sometimes, people use the letter H for fun, like YouTuber Random Typek does in jokes.