Heth (letter)
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| Ḥet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic | Syriac | Hebrew | Aramaic | Phoenician |
|
ﺣ,ﺡ |
ܚ | ח |  |
 |
| Phonemic representation (IPA): | ħ / χ / x | |||
| Position in alphabet: | 8 | |||
| Gematria/Abjad value: | 8 | |||
Ḥet or H̱et (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth, Het, or Heth) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician ḥēth 
, Syriac ḥēth ܚ, Hebrew ḫet (also ḥet, heth) ח, and Arabic ḥāʼ ح (in abjadi order).
Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either pharyngeal /ħ/, or velar /x/ (the two Proto-Semitic phonemes having merged in Canaanite). In Arabic, two corresponding letters were created for both sounds: unmodified ḥāʼ ح represents /ħ/, while ḫāʼ ﺥ represents /x/.
In modern Israeli Hebrew, the historical phonemes of the letters Ḥet ח (/ħ/) and Khaf כ (/x/) merged, both becoming the Voiceless uvular fricative ([χ]).
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Eta (Η), Etruscan 
𐌇, Latin H and Cyrillic И. While H is a consonant in the Latin alphabet, the Greek and Cyrillic equivalents represent vowel sounds.
Contents |
[edit] Origins
The letter shape ultimately goes back to a hieroglyph for "courtyard",
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(possibly named ḥasir in the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, while the name goes rather back to ḫayt, the name reconstructed for a letter derived from a hieroglyph for "thread",
|
The corresponding South Arabian letters are 
ḥ and 
ḫ, corresponding to Ge'ez Ḥauṭ ሐ and Ḫarm ኀ.
[edit] Hebrew Heth
| Hebrew alphabet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| א ב ג ד ה ו | |||||
| ז ח ט י כך | |||||
| ל מם נן ס ע פף | |||||
| צץ ק ר ש ת | |||||
| History · Transliteration Niqqud · Dagesh · Gematria Cantillation · Numeration |
|||||
| Arabic alphabet | ||||||
| ﺍ || ﺏ || ﺕ || ﺙ || ﺝ ||
ﺡ || ﺥ |
||||||
| ﺩ || ﺫ || ﺭ || ﺯ || ﺱ || ﺵ || ﺹ | ||||||
| ﺽ || ﻁ || ﻅ || ﻉ || ﻍ || ﻑ || ﻕ | ||||||
| ﻙ || ﻝ || ﻡ || ﻥ || هـ || ﻭ || ﻱ | ||||||
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza ء Numerals · Numeration |
||||||
| Syriac alphabet | |||||
| ܐ | ܒ | ܓ | ܕ | ||
| ܗ | ܘ | ܙ | ܚ | ܛ | ܝ |
| ܟܟ | ܠ | ܡܡ | ܢܢ | ܣ | ܥ |
| ܦ | ܨ | ܩ | ܪ | ܫ | ܬ |
[edit] Pronunciation
In official Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter Heth usually has the sound value of a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (/ħ/) in accordance with oriental Jewish traditions, although it may instead be a voiceless velar fricative (/x/) due to European influence.
[edit] Variations
Heth, along with Aleph, Ayin, Resh, and He, cannot receive a dagesh. As the voiceless fricative is difficult for most English speakers to pronounce, loanwords are usually Anglizised to have /h/. Thus challah (חלה), pronounced as /xala/ or /ħala/ by Hebrew speakers is pronounced /halə/ by most English speakers, which can be obvious to native speakers of Hebrew.
[edit] Significance
In gematria, Heth represents the number eight, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 8000 (i.e. חתשנד in numbers would be the date 8754).
In chat rooms and online forums, the letter Heth repeated denotes laughter, similar to the English lol.
