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Voiceless glottal fricative

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This is a standard voiceless glottal fricative. It is also comparable to a devoiced vowel. The symbol is /h/. In Romance languages that do not pronounce this sound, and English, the letter's name is usually pronounced with a palatal or velar sound (Spanish /aʧe/, French /aʃ/, Italian /aka/, Portuguese /aga/, English /eʧ/). In Germanic languages, the name is usually pronounced /ha/.

Natlangs

Germanic languages

English

In all stages of English, the letter h in the initial position (in a syllable of Modern English, though most of the time /h/ comes at the beginning of a word, notable exception is behind). In Anglo-Saxon, an h after a vowel would be /x/ or /ç/ depending on the location of the vowel. The symbol h is used in many digraphs without the /h/ pronunciation, such as ch /ʧ/, th /ð/ or /θ/, rh /ɹ/, ph /f/, sh /ʃ/, wh /ʍ/, and hn /n̯/, hr /ɹ̯/, and hl /ɬ/ (the last three are from Old and Middle English).

Other West Germanic Languages

High German, Dutch, and Low German also commonly use the symbol h to represent the sound /h/, which is also fairly common in the language.

In High German variations the digraphs sch /ʃ/, tsch /ʧ/, ch (Old High German hh /ç/), and ph /f/ or /pf/ are all used without the /h/ sound but spelt with the orthographic 'h.

Old Norse and Icelandic

The symbol h was/is used to mark devoiced versions of normally voiced sounds (like in Anglo-Saxon). Otherwise it is used to represent the normal /h/.

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

These three use the same symbol to represent this sound.

Romance Languages

Latin and Romanian

Latin and Romanian did/do have the letter h, which it was/is pronounced /h/, like most Germanic languages.

Spanish

Spanish does not naturally have the sound /h/, but in some dialects in Central and South America, the sound /h/ is used for the letter j. NOTE: This is only a few dialects, it is more standard to pronounce j as /x/ after back vowels, and /ç/ elsewhere!

French

In Normandy, which was occupied by the Norman (Viking) peoples, they brought the /h/ sound with them into Old Norman French. Even today, the Norman French language is spoken with a /h/ sound.

Italian

In Lombardy, originally occupied by the Germanic speaking Langobards (Long Beards), some cases have still retained the Germanic glottal fricative in pronunciation.

Hebrew and Arabic

The Hebrew and Yiddish symbol for the /h/ sound is ה. The Arabic symbol for it is ه.

Ancient Egyptian

The symbol for /h/ was a reed shelter.

This is the Egyptian symbol for /h/.

Hawai'ian

Hawai'ian has the /h/ as an important part of its limited number of consonants.

Turkish

Turkish also uses the symbol h for the glottal fricative /h/.

Sources

This page is by Timothy Patrick Snyder