Heth

Heth

Heth, also called Chet or Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads. This includes the Phoenician ḥēt 𐤇, the Hebrew ḥēt ח‎, the Aramaic ḥēṯ 𐡇, the Syriac ḥēṯ ܚ, and the Arabic ḥāʾ ح‎. It is also linked to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪂‎‎‎, the South Arabian 𐩢, and the Ge'ez ሐ.

Heth originally made a soft, voiceless sound. In Arabic, two letters were made for these sounds: ḥāʾ ح for one sound, and ḫāʾ خ for another.

The Phoenician letter influenced many other writing systems. It helped create the Greek eta Η, the Etruscan letter, the Latin H, and the Cyrillic И. While H is a consonant in Latin, in Greek and Cyrillic it stands for a vowel sound. This change happened because the letter was once a consonant in Greek and later became the rough breathing sign. The Phoenician letter also inspired an old Greek letter called heta and a special Cyrillic letter called short I. The Arabic letter ح is sometimes written as Ch in English.

Origins

The letter Ḥet likely comes from an ancient Egyptian symbol. One idea is that it started from a symbol for "courtyard." In Hebrew, a word meaning "courtyard" also starts with Ḥet. Another idea is that it came from a symbol for "thread" or "wick."

The letter is often written as ḥ, with a small dot under the h. Sometimes, people use a capital Ch to represent it in writing.

Arabic ḥāʾ

See also: خ

The letter ḥāʾ is the sixth letter of the Arabic alphabet. Its shape changes depending on where it appears in a word. In some places, it looks a bit like a bird’s beak.

This special letter is used with two others, which are ḫāʾ and ǧīm. In Maltese, the letter that matches it is written as ħ.

Pronunciation

In Arabic, ḥāʾ sounds similar to the English h, but it is a bit rougher. In Persian, it sounds just like the English h.

Hebrew het

Pronunciation

In modern Israeli Hebrew and Ashkenazi Hebrew, the letter Ḥet (חֵית) sounds like a soft "kh" sound. This happened because the sounds of Ḥet and Khaf merged over time.

Some Israeli Arabs and Mizrahi Jews, especially older people and popular Mizrahi singers, still use the original sound.

In gematria, Ḥet stands for the number eight.

In chat rooms, online forums, and social media, repeating the letter Ḥet (חחחחחחחח) is a fun way to show laughter, like saying "Haha" in English.

Syriac cheth

The letter Heth is important in many old writing systems. In Syriac, it is called ḥēṯ and looks like ܚ. This letter comes from even older languages and shows us how people wrote and spoke long ago.

Character encodings

The letter Heth is the eighth letter in several ancient writing systems. These include the Phoenician ḥēt 𐤇, Hebrew ḥēt ח‎, Aramaic ḥēṯ 𐡇, Syriac ḥēṯ ܚ, and Arabic ḥāʾ ح‎. It is also linked to writing systems like Ancient North Arabian 𐪂‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩢, and Ge'ez ሐ.

Originally, Heth made a soft hissing sound, like the "ch" in the Scottish word "loch" /ħ/ or the "ch" in the German word "Bach" /x/.