H, or h, is the eighth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is aitch (pronounced , plural aitches), or regionally haitch . History
The original Semitic letter Heth most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (ħ). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts. The Greek Eta Η in archaic Greek alphabets, before coming  to represent a long vowel, /ɛː/, still represented a similar sound, the voiceless glottal fricative /h/. In this context, the letter eta is also known as Heta to underline this fact. Thus, in the Old Italic alphabets, the letter Heta of the Euboean alphabet was adopted with its original sound value /h/. While Etruscan and Latin had /h/ as a phoneme, almost all Romance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the /h/ phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic languages, and Spanish developed a secondary /h/ from /f/, before losing it again; various Spanish dialects have developed [h] as an allophone of /s/ or /x/ in most Spanish-speaking countries, and various dialects of Portuguese use it as an allophone of /ʀ/. H is also used in many spelling systems in digraphs and trigraphs, such as ch, which represents /tʃ/ in Spanish, Galician, and Old Portuguese; /ʃ/ in French and modern Portuguese; /k/ in Italian and French. Name in English
For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as  and spelled "aitch" or occasionally "eitch".
Other representations
See also
American Sign Language grammar
List of Egyptian hieroglyphs#H

References
External links

 The dictionary definition of H at Wiktionary
 The dictionary definition of h at Wiktionary
Lubliner, Coby. 2008. "The Story of H." (essay on origins and uses of the letter "h")