Heth

Heth, also written Chet, Khet, Het or Ḥeth, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ḥēt 𐤇, Hebrew ḥēṯ 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 or Kh in English.