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 chet (also khet) ח, Arabic ḥāʼ ح (in abjadi order), 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 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.
Last update: 2008-05-05 14:57:17 Cheth | Copyright 2008 HubHip.com>