He (letter)
← Dalet He Waw → | ||||||||||
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Phonemic representation | h | |||||||||
Position in alphabet | 5 | |||||||||
Numerical value | 5 | |||||||||
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | ||||||||||
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He is the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Hē , Hebrew Hē .mw-parser-output .script-hebrew,.mw-parser-output .script-Hebr{font-size:1.15em;font-family:"Ezra SIL","Ezra SIL SR","Keter Aram Tsova","Taamey Ashkenaz","Taamey David CLM","Taamey Frank CLM","Frank Ruehl CLM","Keter YG","Shofar","David CLM","Hadasim CLM","Simple CLM","Nachlieli","SBL BibLit","SBL Hebrew",Cardo,Alef,"Noto Serif Hebrew","Noto Sans Hebrew","David Libre",David,"Times New Roman",Gisha,Arial,FreeSerif,FreeSans}
ה, Aramaic Hē , Syriac Hē ܗ, and Arabic Hāʾ ه. Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ([h]).
The proto-Canaanite letter gave rise to the Greek Epsilon, Etruscan 𐌄, Latin E, Ë and Ɛ, and Cyrillic Е, Ё, Є and Э. He, like all Phoenician letters, represented a consonant, but the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic equivalents have all come to represent vowel sounds.
Contents
1 Origins
2 Arabic hāʾ
3 Hebrew Hei
3.1 Pronunciation
3.2 Significance of Hei
3.2.1 In Judaism
4 Syriac Heh
5 Character encodings
6 External links
Origins
In Proto-Northwest Semitic there were still three voiceless fricatives: uvular ḫ, glottal h, and pharyngeal ḥ. In the Wadi el-Hol script, these appear to be expressed by derivatives of the following Egyptian hieroglyphs
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ḫayt "thread",
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hillul "jubilation", compare South Arabian h, ḥ, ḫ, Ge'ez ሀ, ሐ, ኀ, and
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ḥasir "court".
In the Phoenician alphabet, ḫayt and ḥasir are merged into Heth "fence", while hillul is replaced by He "window".
Arabic hāʾ
The letter is named hāʾ. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
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Glyph form: | .mw-parser-output .script-arabic,.mw-parser-output .script-Arab{font-family:Scheherazade,Lateef,LateefGR,Amiri,"Noto Naskh Arabic","Droid Arabic Naskh",Harmattan,"Arabic Typesetting","Traditional Arabic","Simplified Arabic","Times New Roman",Arial,"Sakkal Majalla","Microsoft Uighur",Calibri,"Microsoft Sans Serif","Segoe UI",serif,sans-serif;font-weight:normal} ه | ـه | ـهـ | هـ |
Hāʾ is used as a suffix (with the harakat dictated by ʾIʿrab) indicating possession, indicating that the noun marked with the suffix belongs to a specific masculine possessor; for example, كِتَاب kitāb ("book") becomes كِتَابُهُ kitābuhu ("his book") with the addition of final hāʾ; the possessor is implied in the suffix. A longer example, هُوَ يَقْرَأُ كِتَابَهُ, (huwa yaqraʼu kitābahu, "he reads his book") more clearly indicates the possessor. Hāʾ is also used as the Arabic abbreviation for dates following the Islamic era AH.
The hāʾ suffix appended to a verb represents a masculine object (e.g. يَقْرَأُهُ, yaqraʾuhu, "he reads it").
The feminine form of this construction is in both cases ـهَا -hā.
In Nastaʿlīq the letter has its own particular shapes. As Urdu and other languages of Pakistan are usually written in Nastaʿlīq, they normally employ those shapes, which are given an independent code point (U+06C1) for compatibility:
Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
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Glyph form: | ہ | ـہ | ـہـ | ہـ |
For aspiration Urdu and other languages of Pakistan use a special form of hāʾ, called in Urdu do chashmī he ("two-eyed he"):
Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
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Glyph form: | ھ | ـھ | ـھـ | ھـ |
Many Turkic languages of Central Asia like Uyghur as well as Kurdish use the modification of the letter for front vowels /æ/ or /ɛ/. This has its own code point (U+06D5). To distinguish it from Arabic hāʾ /h/ the letter lacks its initial and medial forms:
Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
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Glyph form: | ە | ـە | ـە | ە |
Hebrew Hei
Orthographic variants | ||||
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Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi script | ||
Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
ה | ה | ה |
Hebrew spelling:
הֵא
Pronunciation
In modern Hebrew, the letter represents a voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/, and may also be dropped, although this pronunciation is seen as substandard.
Also, in many variant Hebrew pronunciations the letter may represent a glottal stop. In word-final position, Hei is used to indicate an a-vowel, usually that of qamatz (
ָ ), and in this sense functions like Aleph, Vav, and Yud as a mater lectionis, indicating the presence of a long vowel.
Hei, along with Aleph, Ayin, Reish, and Khet, cannot receive a dagesh. Nonetheless, it does receive a marking identical to the dagesh, to form Hei-mappiq (הּ). Although indistinguishable for most modern speakers or readers of Hebrew, the mapiq is placed in a word-final Hei to indicate that the letter is not merely a mater lectionis but the consonant should be aspirated in that position. It is generally used in Hebrew to indicate the third-person feminine singular genitive marker. Today, such a pronunciation only occurs in religious contexts and even then often only by careful readers of the scriptures.
Significance of Hei
In gematria, Hei symbolizes the number five, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 5000 (i.e. התשנ״ד in numbers would be the date 5754).
Attached to words, Hei may have three possible meanings:
- A preposition meaning the definite article "the", or the relative pronouns "that", or "who" (as in "a boy who reads"). For example, yeled, a boy; hayeled, the boy.
- A prefix indicating that the sentence is a question. (For example, Yadata, You knew; Hayadata?, Did you know?)
- A suffix after place names indicating movement towards the given noun. (For example, Yerushalayim, Jerusalem; Yerushalaymah, towards Jerusalem.)
In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of he, out of all the letters, is 8.18%.
Hei, representing five in gematria, is often found on amulets, symbolizing the five fingers of a hand, a very common talismanic symbol.
In Judaism
Hei is often used to represent the name of God as an abbreviation for Hashem, which means The Name and is a way of saying God without actually saying the name of God. In print, Hashem is usually written as Hei with a geresh: ה׳.
Syriac Heh
Heh |
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Madnḫaya Heh |
Serṭo Heh |
Esṭrangela Heh |
In the Syriac alphabet, the fifth letter is ܗ — Heh (ܗܹܐ). It is pronounced as an [h]. At the end of a word with a point above it, it represents the third-person feminine singular suffix. Without the point, it stands for the masculine equivalent. Standing alone with a horizontal line above it, it is the abbreviation for either hānoh (ܗܵܢܘܿ), meaning 'this is' or 'that is', or halelûya (ܗܵܠܹܠܘܼܝܵܐ). As a numeral, He represents the number five.
Character encodings
Character | ה | ه | ܗ | ࠄ | ||||
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Unicode name | HEBREW LETTER HE | ARABIC LETTER HEH | SYRIAC LETTER HE | SAMARITAN LETTER IY | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 1492 | U+05D4 | 1607 | U+0647 | 1815 | U+0717 | 2052 | U+0804 |
UTF-8 | 215 148 | D7 94 | 217 135 | D9 87 | 220 151 | DC 97 | 224 160 132 | E0 A0 84 |
Numeric character reference | ה | ה | ه | ه | ܗ | ܗ | ࠄ | ࠄ |
Character | 𐎅 | 𐡄 | 𐤄 | |||
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Unicode name | UGARITIC LETTER HO | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER HE | PHOENICIAN LETTER HE | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 66437 | U+10385 | 67652 | U+10844 | 67844 | U+10904 |
UTF-8 | 240 144 142 133 | F0 90 8E 85 | 240 144 161 132 | F0 90 A1 84 | 240 144 164 132 | F0 90 A4 84 |
UTF-16 | 55296 57221 | D800 DF85 | 55298 56388 | D802 DC44 | 55298 56580 | D802 DD04 |
Numeric character reference | 𐎅 | 𐎅 | 𐡄 | 𐡄 | 𐤄 | 𐤄 |
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to ה. |