Heth

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

Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either pharyngeal /ħ/, or velar /x/. In Arabic, two corresponding letters were created for both phonemic sounds: unmodified ḥāʾ ح represents /ħ/, while ḫāʾ خ represents /x/.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek eta Η, Etruscan , Latin H, and Cyrillic И. While H is a consonant in the Latin alphabet, the Greek and Cyrillic equivalents represent vowel sounds, though the letter was originally a consonant in Greek and this usage later evolved into the rough breathing character. The Phoenician letter also gave rise to the archaic Greek letter heta, as well as a variant of Cyrillic letter I, short I. The Arabic letter (ح) is sometimes transliterated as Ch in English.