Heth

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 ḥēth (also khet or chet) ח, Arabic ḥāʾ ح, and Berber .

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 phonemic sounds: unmodified ḥāʾ ح represents /ħ/, while ḫāʾ 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.

Origins

The letter shape ultimately goes back to a hieroglyph for "courtyard", (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.

Hebrew Ḥet

Hebrew spelling: חֵית

Pronunciation

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter Khet usually has the sound value of a voiceless uvular fricative (/χ/), due to European influence. It was originally pronounced as a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (/ħ/) and is still among Mizrahim (especially among the older generation and popular Mizrahi singers), in accordance with oriental Jewish traditions.

The ability to pronounce the Arabic letter ḥāʾ (ح) correctly as a voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ is often used as a shibboleth to distinguish Arabic-speakers from non-Arabic-speakers; in particular, pronunciation of the letter as /x/ is seen as a hallmark of Ashkenazi Jews and Greeks.

Chet is one of the few Hebrew consonants that can take a vowel at the end of a word. This occurs when patach gnuva comes under the Chet at the end of the word. The combination is then pronounced /-aχ/ rather than /-χa/. For example: פתוח (ˌpaˈtuaχ), and תפוח (ˌtaˈpuaχ).

Variations

Chet, along with Aleph, Ayin, Resh, and He, cannot receive a dagesh. As pharyngeal fricatives are difficult for most English speakers to pronounce, loanwords are usually Anglicized to have /h/. Thus challah (חלה), pronounced by native Hebrew speakers as /xala/ or /ħala/ is pronounced /halə/ by most English speakers, who cannot often perceive the difference between [h] and [ħ].

Significance

In gematria, Chet 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 Chet repeated denotes laughter, similar to the English LOL.

Arabic ḥāʾ

The letter is named ḥāʾ. It is commonly known in Egypt as [ħɑ]. The letter is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:

See also

• Ħ, ħ : Latin letter H with stroke