During the standardization of Basque in the 1970s, the compromise was reached that h would be accepted if it were the first consonant in a syllable.

In words where the ⟨h⟩ is derived from a Latin /f/, it is still sometimes pronounced with the value [h] in some regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, Canarias, Cantabria, and the Americas. Most words that begin with an H muet come from Latin ( honneur, homme) or from Greek through Latin ( hécatombe), whereas most words beginning with an H aspiré come from Germanic ( harpe, hareng) or non-Indo-European languages ( harem, hamac, haricot); in some cases, an orthographic ⟨h⟩ was added to disambiguate the [v] and semivowel [ɥ] pronunciations before the introduction of the distinction between the letters ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩: huit (from uit, ultimately from Latin octo), huître (from uistre, ultimately from Greek through Latin ostrea). The Oxford English Dictionary says the original name of the letter was [ˈaha] in Latin; this became [ˈaka] in Vulgar Latin, passed into English via Old French [atʃ], and by Middle English was pronounced [aːtʃ]. 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/.It has been left unchanged in words derived from Greek, such as Theater ('theater') and Thron ('throne'), which continue to be spelled with ⟨th⟩ even after the last German spelling reform. In colloquial speech, this form (or at least its pronunciation) are also used with words starting with other letters. See the Wikipedia article on Finnish for more information, and h for development of the glyph itself.

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.

Seemingly native words spelt with ⟨h⟩ (rather than ⟨ch⟩) are generally from Czech or other Slavic dialects. The abbreviation can be followed by a number between 00 and 59 to indicate the minutes of an hour (as in French). The pronunciation / h eɪ tʃ/ and the associated spelling "haitch" is often considered to be h-adding and is considered non-standard in England. Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content.

For example in le homard ('the lobster') the article le remains unelided, and may be separated from the noun with a bit of a glottal stop. Some words beginning with [je] or [we], such as hielo, 'ice' and huevo, 'egg', were given an initial ⟨h⟩ to avoid confusion between their initial semivowels and the consonants ⟨j⟩ and ⟨v⟩.

Learner's Dictionary: H Collins English Dictionary: h¹ Collins English Dictionary: h² Collins English Dictionary: H Collins English Dictionary: h.

Erman, Adolf; Grapow, Hermann(1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎ [2], volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, page470. In Spanish and Portuguese, ⟨h⟩ ( hache ['atʃe] in Spanish, agá [ɐˈɣa, aˈɡa] in Portuguese) is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in hijo [ˈixo] ('son') and húngaro [ˈũɡaɾu] ('Hungarian'). Latin-script letters ) A a, B b, C c, D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, X x, I i, J j, K k, Kh kh, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, Ph ph, R r, S s, T t, Th th, U u, V v, Z z International Standard: ( À à, Ä ä, Ǎ ǎ), Ć ć, Ćh ćh, ( È è, Ë ë, Ě ě), ( Ì ì, Ï ï, Ǐ ǐ), ( Ò ò, Ö ö, Ǒ ǒ), Rr rr, Ś ś, ( Ù ù, Ü ü, Ǔ ǔ), Ź ź, Ʒ ʒ, Q q, Ç ç, ϴ θ.

The haitch pronunciation of h has spread in England, being used by approximately 24% of English people born since 1982, [5] and polls continue to show this pronunciation becoming more common among younger native speakers. Note that it represents the sound of IPA [x] (like German machen, ach), not (as in most other alphabets based on the Latin script) the sound of IPA [h]. For most English speakers, the name for the letter is pronounced as / eɪ tʃ/ and spelled "aitch" [1] or occasionally "eitch".