The eighth letter of the latin
alphabet. The Semitic letter ח (Ħęt) probably represented the phoneme /X// (pharyngeal
? voiceless
fricative) (
IPA [ħ]). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence. Early
Greek H stood for /h/, but later on
Η or
η (Ęta) stood for /E:/. In Modern Greek this
phoneme fell together with /i/, similar to the English development where EA /E:/ and EE /e:/ came to be both pronounced /i:/ . In Etruscan
? and
Latin, the sound value /h/ was maintained, but all Romance languages lost the sound – only Rumanian
? borrowed the /h/ phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages and Castilian
? /x/ developed [h]
allophones in some Spanish-speaking countries.
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)