H: Difference between revisions
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Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The [[Oxford English Dictionary]] says the original name of the letter was {{IPA|/aha/}}; this became {{IPA|/aka/}} in Latin, passed into English ''via'' Old French {{IPA|/atʃ/}}, and by Middle English was pronounced {{IPA|/aːtʃ/}}. [[The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]] derives it from French ''hache'' from Latin ''haca'' or ''hic''. |
Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The [[Oxford English Dictionary]] says the original name of the letter was {{IPA|/aha/}}; this became {{IPA|/aka/}} in Latin, passed into English ''via'' Old French {{IPA|/atʃ/}}, and by Middle English was pronounced {{IPA|/aːtʃ/}}. [[The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]] derives it from French ''hache'' from Latin ''haca'' or ''hic''. |
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==H was a chicken and loved to be fed |
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==Usage== |
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In the [[help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet]], variations of the letter are used to represent two sounds. The lowercase form, {{IPA|[h]}}, represents the [[voiceless glottal fricative]] or 'aspirate', and the small capital form, {{IPA|[ʜ]}}, represents the [[voiceless epiglottal fricative]]. |
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In English, H occurs as a single-letter [[grapheme]] (with value {{IPA|/h/}} or [[silent letter|silent]]) and in various [[digraph]]s, such as ''ch'' ({{IPA|/tʃ/}}, {{IPA|/ʃ/}}, {{IPA|/k/}}, or {{IPA|/x/}}), ''gh'' (silent, {{IPA|/ɡ/}}, or {{IPA|/f/}}) , ''ph'' ({{IPA|/f/}}), ''rh'' ({{IPA|/r/}}), ''sh'' ({{IPA|/ʃ/}}), ''th'' ({{IPA|/θ/}} or {{IPA|/ð/}}), ''wh'' ({{IPA|/w/}}, {{IPA|/hw/}}). H is silent in a [[syllable rime]], as in ''ah'', ''ohm'', ''dahlia'', ''cheetah'', ''pooh-poohed''. |
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H is often silent in the [[Weak form and strong form|weak form]] of some [[function words]] beginning with H, including ''had'', ''has'', ''have'', ''he'', ''her'', ''him'', ''his''; and in some words of [[Romance language|Romance]] origin and, for some speakers, also in an initial unstressed syllable, as in "an historic occasion", "an hotel". |
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In the [[German language]], the name of the letter is pronounced {{IPA|/haː/}}. Following a vowel, it often silently indicates that the vowel is long: In the word {{lang|de|''erhöhen''}} "heighten", only the first <h> represents {{IPA|/h/}}. In 1901, a [[spelling reform]] eliminated the silent <h> in nearly all instances of <th> in native German words such as ''thun'' "to do" or ''Thür'' "door". It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such as {{lang|de|''Theater''}} "theater" and {{lang|de|''Thron''}} "throne", which continue to be spelled with <th> even after the last German spelling reform. |
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In Spanish and Portuguese H is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in ''hijo'' {{IPA|[ˈixo]}} ('son'), ''hola'' {{IPA|[ˈola]}} ('hello'), and ''hábil'' {{IPA|[ˈaβil]}} ('skillful'). (The exception to this occurs in the combination "ch", pronounced similar to how it is in English). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the sound {{IPA|[h]}}. The {{IPA|[h]}} sound exists in a number of dialects in Spanish, either as a syllable-final allophone of {{IPA|/s/}} (for example Andalusia, Argentina or Cuba - vg. ''esto'' {{IPA|[ˈeht̪o]}} "this", or as a dialectal realization of Standard {{IPA|/x/}} (for example Mexican ''caja'' {{IPA|[ˈkaha]}} "box"). |
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In the French language, the name of the letter is pronounced {{IPA|/aʃ/}}. The French language classifies words that begin with this letter in two ways that must be learned to use French properly, 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 (grammar)|article]] ''le'' or ''la'' is [[elision (French)|elided]] to ''l'''. For example, ''le + hébergement'' becomes ''l'hébergement'' "the accommodation". The other kind of ''h'' is called ''h aspiré'' ("[[Aspirated h|aspirated ''h'']]", though it is not normally aspirated phonetically), and is treated as a phantom consonant. 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 ''h'' was added to disambiguate the {{IPA|[v]}} and semivowel {{IPA|[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''). |
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In Italian H has no real [[Phonology|phonological]] value. It is rather a [[diacritic]] grapheme. The most important uses are to differentiate certain short words, for example some [[present tense]] forms of the verb ''avere'' "to have", in short [[interjections]], and in the [[Digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] ''ch'' {{IPA|/k/}} and ''gh'' {{IPA|/ɡ/}}. |
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Some languages, including [[English language|English]], [[Czech language|Czech]], [[Slovak language|Slovak]], [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] and [[Finnish language|Finnish]], use H as a [[voiced glottal fricative|'''breathy voiced''' glottal fricative]] {{IPA|[ɦ]}}, often as an [[allophone]] of otherwise voiceless /h/ in a voiced environment. |
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In [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]] and [[Belarusian language|Belarusian]], when written in the Latin alphabet, H is also commonly used for {{IPA|/ɦ/}}, normally written with the Cyrillic letter [[Г]]. (Note the difference from [[Russian language|Russian]] pronunciation and romanisation). |
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In [[Irish language|Irish]] H after a consonant indicates [[lenition]] of that consonant; it is known as a ''séimhiú''. |
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==Codes for computing== |
==Codes for computing== |
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Revision as of 22:31, 1 October 2009
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| ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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| AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
H is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in both British and American English is aitch[1] (Template:Pron-en), plural aitches, though it is also pronounced haitch /ˈheɪtʃ/ in some dialects (see the discussion below).
H is a letter in the alphabet the egyptians made it up. But some people say it was the chinese but H is a bad letter because very few words start with H.
Name in English
In most dialects of English, the name for the letter is pronounced /eɪtʃ/ and spelled aitch[1] or occasionally eitch. Pronunciation /heɪtʃ/ and hence a spelling of haitch is usually considered to be h-adding and hence nonstandard. It is, however, a feature of Hiberno-English[2] and other varieties of English, such as those of Malaysia and Singapore. In Northern Ireland it is a shibboleth as Protestant schools teach aitch and Catholics haitch.[3] In Australia, this has also been attributed to Catholic school teaching.[4] The perceived name of the letter affects the choice of indefinite article before initialisms beginning with H: for example "an HTML page" or "a HTML page". The pronunciation /heɪtʃ/ may be a hypercorrection formed by analogy with the names of the other letters of the alphabet, most of which include the sound they represent.[5]
Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's name. The Oxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was /aha/; this became /aka/ in 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 French hache from Latin haca or hic.
==H was a chicken and loved to be fed
Codes for computing
class="template-letter-box | In Unicode, the capital H is codepoint U+0048 and the lower case h is U+0068.
The ASCII code for capital H is 72 and for lowercase h is 104; or in binary 01001000 and 01101000, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital H is 200 and for lowercase h is 136.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "H" and "h" for upper and lower case respectively.
See also
References
- ^ a b "H" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "aitch", op. cit.
- ^ A dictionary of Hiberno-English, Terence Patrick Dolan page 118, Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2004
- ^ In Newfoundland, the pronunciation is /heɪtʃ/. The Association for Scottish Literary Studies
- ^ Ab(h)ominable (H)aitch by Frederick Ludowyk, Australian National Dictionary Centre
- ^ Todd, L. & Hancock I.: "International English Usage", page 254. Routledge, 1990.