H is the 8th letter in our modern alphabet and its history is the most dramatic one. Evaluation history of H remains stable and symmetrical Position of H is same in Semitic, Greek, Etruscan and Latin alphabets.
The letter H is derived from the Semitics from the word ‘kheth’ which means fence. Around 900 B.C. the Greeks borrowed this word (kheth) from the Semitics and eventually they left out it’s top and bottom horizontal bars .In fact they faced some trouble in pronouncing the sound of the kheth, they used it to depict a consonant letter called eta .In the archaic period the same letter was called with the name heta. However, the sign of eta resembles the sound of a long ‘e’, to distinguish it from the sound of short ‘e’ represented by the Greek letter epsilon. Then the Etruscans and Romans re- borrowed the Greek eta and they finally derived the letter H. The Etruscans put the top and bottom crossbars back on the letter, while the Romans continued and bring its original shape H.
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Phoenician |
Greek |
Greek |
Early |
 |
 |
 |
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some forms of H
Linguistic usage
Use of letter H can be observed in plenty of spelling systems such as digraphs and trigraphs as Th, ch etc. H is silent in a syllable rime. It is even silent in some weak form words E.g how, has, his, when where what why, which
Is H is silent word? Why not, of course H is also a silent word. Sometimes it is sounded as in history and sometimes it is silent as in hour. In sounded H, the word is treated as an consonant and in silent h is treated as an vowel. For example, an hour, a history, etc. In English pronunciation and spelling will not always go together.
Sometimes people spell the words differently depends on the country. Even in America and England it will differ, people in America pronounce the word Herb with silent h as ‘erb’ and people in England will pronounce with sounded h as herb. Sometimes in America and England never use H at all while spelling the words. Some common H silent words are knight, night, flight, tight etc.
AITCH Vs. HAITCH:
Do you know the correct pronunciation of H? Actually aitch is the correct pronunciation as per oxford English dictionary. But many people used to pronounce it as haitch. The origin of haitch appears in Irish. In British English dictionaries the letter H is pronounced as aytch. The words haytch is also attested as a legitimate variant.
Some representation of H from medieval ages
This is the old roman square capital H.
This H is uncial one.
This is 6th century half uncial H.
It is visigothic script with wedged top.
It is 10th century of insular minuscule with flat angular shape.
This is 12th century h, which is very common are English scripts.
It is 13th century of gothic textura with lower angular one.
This H is late 15th and early 16th century h.
As per the international Phoenician alphabet h represents two sounds as uppercase H represents voiceless epiglottal fricative and lowercase h represents glottal fricative and superscript h is used to represent aspiration.
Related character
| Symbol | origin |
| Η η | Greek letter Eta |
| Ħ ħ | Latin letter H with stroke |
| Ĥ ĥ | Latin letter H with circumflex |
| Н н | Cyrillic letter En |
Character Encoding
The following table specifies value of “H” in some character Encodings
Character encoding Latin capital letter H Latin small letter h
Decimal hex Decimal hex
Unicode 72 0048 104 0068
ASCII 72 48 104 68
UTF-8 72 48 104 68
EBCDIC family 200 C8 136 88
What Does “H” Stand for in various fields?
General
H is letter used to depict the hour in computer codes.
H represents height
H represents hexa decimal numbering system
Science
H is a symbol that denotes hydrogen (Chemistry)