H, orh, is the eighthletter of theLatin alphabet, used in themodern English alphabet, including the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English isaitch (pronounced/eɪtʃ/ⓘ, pluralaitches), or regionallyhaitch (pronounced/heɪtʃ/, pluralhaitches).[1]
Name
English
For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as/eɪtʃ/ and spelled "aitch"[1] or occasionally "eitch". The pronunciation/heɪtʃ/ and the associated spelling "haitch" are often considered to beh-adding and are considered non-standard in England.[2] It is, however, a feature ofHiberno-English,[3] and occurs sporadically in various other dialects.
The perceived name of the letter affects the choice ofindefinite article beforeinitialisms beginning with H: for example "an H-bomb" or "a H-bomb". The pronunciation/heɪtʃ/ may be ahypercorrection formed by analogy with the names of the other letters of the alphabet, most of which include the sound they represent.[4]
Thehaitch pronunciation ofh 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 standard in England, although the pronunciation with/h/ is also attested as a legitimate variant.[2] InNorthern Ireland, the pronunciation of the letter has been used as ashibboleth, with Catholics typically pronouncing it with the/h/ and Protestants pronouncing the letter without it.[6]
Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. TheOxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was[ˈaha] in Latin; this became[ˈaka] in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French[atʃ], and by Middle English was pronounced[aːtʃ].The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language derives it from Frenchhache from Latinhaca orhic.Anatoly Liberman suggests a conflation of two obsolete orderings of the alphabet, one withH immediately followed byK and the other without anyK: reciting the former's..., H, K, L,... as[...(h)akael...] when reinterpreted for the latter..., H, L,... would imply a pronunciation of[(h)aka] forH.[7]
WhileEtruscan andLatin had/h/ as aphoneme, almost allRomance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the/h/ phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, andSpanish developed a secondary/h/ from/f/, before losing it again; various Spanish dialects have developed[h] as anallophone of/s/ or/x/ in most Spanish-speaking countries, and various dialects ofPortuguese use it as an allophone of/ʀ/. 'H' is also used in many spelling systems indigraphs andtrigraphs, such as 'ch', which represents/tʃ/ in Spanish,Galician, andOld Portuguese;/ʃ/ inFrench andmodern Portuguese;/k/ inItalian and French.
The letter is silent in asyllable rime, as inah,ohm,dahlia,cheetah, andpooh-poohed, as well as in certain other words (mostly of French origin) such ashour,honest,herb (inAmerican but notBritish English) andvehicle (in certain varieties of English). Initial/h/ is often not pronounced in theweak form of somefunction words, includinghad,has,have,he,her,him,his, and in some varieties of English (including most regional dialects of England and Wales), it is oftenomitted in all words. It was formerly common foran rather thana to be used as the indefinite article before a word beginning with/h/ in anunstressed syllable, as in "an historian", but the use ofa is now more usual.
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]
InGerman, following a vowel, it often silently indicates that the vowel is long: In the worderhöhen ('heighten'), the second⟨h⟩ is mute for most speakers outside of Switzerland. In 1901, aspelling reform eliminated the silent⟨h⟩ in nearly all instances of⟨th⟩ in native German words such asthun ('to do') orThür ('door'). It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such asTheater ('theater') andThron ('throne'), which continue to be spelled with⟨th⟩ even after the last German spelling reform.
InSpanish andPortuguese,⟨h⟩ is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as inhijo[ˈixo] ('son') andhúngaro[ˈũɡaɾu] ('Hungarian'). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the sound/h/. In words where the⟨h⟩ is derived from a Latin/f/, it is still sometimes pronounced with the value[h] in some regions ofAndalusia,Extremadura,Canarias,Cantabria, and the Americas. Some words beginning with[je] or[we], such ashielo, 'ice' andhuevo, 'egg', were given an initial⟨h⟩ to avoid confusion between their initial semivowels and the consonants⟨j⟩ and⟨v⟩. This is because⟨j⟩ and⟨v⟩ used to be considered variants of⟨i⟩ and⟨u⟩ respectively.⟨h⟩ also appears in the digraph⟨ch⟩, which represents/tʃ/ in Spanish and northern Portugal, and/ʃ/ in varieties that have merged both sounds (the latter originally represented by⟨x⟩ instead), such as most of the Portuguese language and some Spanish dialects, prominentlyChilean 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. TheH muet, or "mute"⟨h⟩, is considered as though the letter were not there at all. For example, the singular definitearticlele orla, which iselided tol' before a vowel, elides before anH muet followed by a vowel. For example,le + hébergement becomesl'hébergement ('the accommodation'). The other kind of⟨h⟩ is calledh aspiré ("aspirated '⟨h⟩'", though it is not normally aspirated phonetically), and does not allow elision orliaison. For example, inle homard ('the lobster') the articlele remains unelided, and may be separated from the noun with a bit of a glottal stop. Most words that begin with anH muet come from Latin (honneur,homme) or from Greek through Latin (hécatombe), whereas most words beginning with anH 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 (fromuit, ultimately from Latinocto),huître (fromuistre, ultimately from Greek through Latinostrea).
In Italian,⟨h⟩ has nophonological value. Its most important uses are in thedigraphs 'ch'/k/ and 'gh'/ɡ/, as well as to differentiate the spellings of certain short words that arehomophones, for example, somepresent tense forms of the verbavere ('to have') (such ashanno, 'they have', vs.anno, 'year'), and in shortinterjections (oh,ehi).
InHungarian, the letter represents a phoneme/h/ with four allophones:[h] before vowels,[ɦ] between two vowels,[ç] afterfront vowels, and[x] word-finally afterback vowels. It can also be a silent word-finally after back vowels. It is[xː] when geminated. In archaic spelling, the digraph⟨ch⟩ represents/t͡ʃ/ (as in the nameSzéchenyi) and/h/ (as inpech, which is pronounced[pɛxː]); in certain environments it breaks palatalization of a consonant, as in the nameBeöthy, which is pronounced[bøːti] (without the interveningh, the nameBeöty could be pronounced[bøːc]); and finally, it acts as a silent component of a digraph, as in the nameVargha, pronounced[vɒrgɒ].
InUkrainian andBelarusian, when written in the Latin alphabet,⟨h⟩ is also commonly used for/ɦ/, which is otherwise written with the Cyrillic letter⟨г⟩.
InIrish,⟨h⟩ is not considered an independent letter, except for a very few non-native words; however,⟨h⟩ placed after a consonant is known as a "séimhiú" and indicates thelenition of that consonant;⟨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⟨h⟩ and the digraph⟨ch⟩ always represent/x/.
InBasque, 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 thestandardization of Basque in the 1970s, a compromise was reached thath would be accepted if it were the first consonant in a syllable. Hence,herri ("people") andetorri ("to come") were accepted instead oferri (Biscayan) andethorri (Souletin).
^ab"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.
^Liberman, Anatoly (7 August 2013)."Alphabet soup, part 2: H and Y".Oxford Etymologist. Oxford University Press.Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved3 October 2013.
^Mička, Pavel."Letter frequency (English)".Algoritmy.net.Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved13 November 2024.Source is Leland, Robert. Cryptological mathematics. [s.l.] : The Mathematical Association of America, 2000. 199 p. ISBN 0-88385-719-7
