H

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, this symbol is used to represent two sounds. Its lowercase form, {{IPA|}}, represents the voiceless glottal fricative, and its small capital form, {{IPA|}}, represents the voiceless epiglottal fricative.

History

The Semitic letter ח (khêt) probably represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (IPA {{IPA|/ħ/}}). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence. The early Greek H stood for {{IPA|/h/}}, but later on this letter eta (Η, η) stood for {{IPA|/ɛ:/}}. In Modern Greek this phoneme fell together with {{IPA|/i/}}, similar to the English development where EA {{IPA|/ɛ:/}} and EE {{IPA|/e:/}} came to be both pronounced {{IPA|/i:/}}.

Related Topics:
Voiceless pharyngeal fricative - IPA - Greek - Eta - Phoneme - English

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In Etruscan and Latin, the sound value {{IPA|/h/}} was maintained, but all Romance languages lost the sound — subsequently Romanian borrowed the {{IPA|/h/}} phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, Spanish developed a secondary {{IPA|/h/}} from F and then lost it again, and Castilian {{IPA|/x/}} has developed an {{IPA|}} allophone in some Spanish-speaking countries. In German, h is typically used as a vowel lengthener as well as the letter for the phoneme {{IPA|/h/}}. This may be because {{IPA|/h/}} was sometimes lost between vowels in German, but it may also have to do with the fact that Romance lost {{IPA|/h/}}. Hence, H is used in many spelling systems in digraphs and trigraphs such as ch in Spanish and English {{IPA|/tʃ/}}, French {{IPA|/ʃ/}} from {{IPA|/tʃ/}}, Italian {{IPA|/k/}}, German {{IPA|/x/}}.

Related Topics:
Etruscan - Latin - Romanian - Spanish - Allophone - Digraphs - Trigraphs

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