Everything about Heth totally explained
» For other uses, see Heth (disambiguation).
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 ,
Syriac ܚ,
Hebrew chet (also khet),
Arabic (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 represents /ħ/, while represents /x/.
In modern
Israeli Hebrew, the historical phonemes of the letters ח (/ħ/) and 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.
Origins
The letter shape ultimately goes back to a
hieroglyph for "courtyard",
O6
(possibly named in the
Middle Bronze Age alphabets, while the name goes rather back to, the name reconstructed for a letter derived from a hieroglyph for "thread",
V28
The corresponding
South Arabian letters are ḥ and ḫ, corresponding to
Ge'ez ሐ and ኀ.
Hebrew Chet
Pronunciation
In
Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter Khet usually has the sound value of a
voiceless uvular fricative (/χ/), due to
European influence. It may also be pronounced as a
voiceless pharyngeal fricative (/ħ/) among
Mizrahim (especially among the older generation and popular Mizrahi singers), in accordance with
oriental Jewish traditions.
Chet is one of three letters that can take a vowel at the end of a word. Normally, the vowel is
patach gnuva, and when it comes under Chet at the end of a word, the combination is pronounced /αx/ rather than /xα/.
Variations
Chet, along with
Aleph,
Ayin,
Resh, and
He, can't receive a
dagesh. As pharyngeal fricatives are difficult for most English speakers to pronounce, loanwords are usually Anglicized to have /h/. Thus
challah (חלה), pronounced by native Hebrew speakers as /xala/ or /ħala/ is pronounced /halə/ by most English speakers, who can't often perceive the difference between [h] and [ħ].
Significance
In
gematria, Chet represents the number eight, and when used at the beginning of
Hebrew years, it means 8000 (for example חתשנד in
numbers would be the
date 8754).
In
chat rooms and
online forums, the letter Chet repeated denotes laughter, similar to the English
LOL.
Arabic a
The letter is named
a, and is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:
The ability to pronounce
a properly is often used as a
shibboleth to distinguish Arabic-speakers from non-Arabic-speakers; in particular, pronunciation of the letter as a
voiceless velar fricative is seen as a hallmark of
Ashkenazi Jews and
Greeks.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Heth'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://heth.totallyexplained.com">Heth Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
