Ĥ

Ĥ, or ĥ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless velar fricative [x] or voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. Its name in Esperanto is ĥo (pronounced /xo/).

It is also used in the revised Demers/Blanchet/St Onge orthography for Chinook Jargon.

In the case of the minuscule, some fonts place the circumflex centred above the entire base letter h, others over the riser of the letter, and others over the shoulder.

ĥ in the fonts Code2000, Sylfaen, Pragmatika Esperanto

Since printers often lacked type for ĥ, L. L. Zamenhof allowed the use of hh as a surrogate. Hx is also used unofficially (there is no confusion, as the letter x is not used in Esperanto).

Reported demise

Ĥ was always the least used Esperanto letter/sound (though it usually has more dictionary entries than ĵ), and most of its uses are in Greek etyms, where it replaced chi. Since the latter sounds [k] in most languages, soon appeared “neologism” equivalents with "ĥ" replaced by "k", such as teĥniko → tekniko, ĥemio → kemio, etc. (Other ĥ-replacements followed unusual patterns, such as Ĥino → Ĉino.)

These additions and replacements come very early and were fully installed by World War I and since then the imminent demise of ĥ is a frequent topic, although it has never really happened. There are very few modern ĥ-replacements, notably koruso, for ĥoro ("chorus"). Some ĥ-words for which a replacement (old or new) exists are however usually preferred, such as ĥaoso.

Several words commonly use ĥ, particularly those of non-Greek etymology (ĥano, ĥoto, Liĥtenŝtejno, etc.) or those in which there is another word that uses "k" in that context. (For example, eĥo ("echo"), ĉeĥo ("Czech") or ĥoro ("chorus") are distinguished from eko ("beginning"), ĉeko ("bank check") and koro ("heart") - and horo ("hour").

Other uses

An Italian italo disco singer from the 80s had the ĥ in his stage name "Cĥato".[1]

In quantum mechanics, Ĥ is sometimes used to represent the Hamiltonian operator.

See also

• Ĉ
• Ĝ
• Ĵ
• Ŝ
• Ŭ

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter H with diacritics
Ĥĥ	Ȟȟ	Ḧḧ	Ḣḣ	Ḩḩ	Ḥḥ	Ḫḫ	H̱ẖ	Ħħ	Ⱨⱨ
Letters using circumflex accent ( ◌̂ )
Ââ	Ĉĉ	Êê	Ĝĝ	Ĥĥ	Î î	Ĵĵ	Ôô	Ŝŝ	Ûû	Ŵŵ	Ŷŷ	Ẑẑ
Related
Derivations Diacritics History ISO/IEC 646 List of letters Numerals Palaeography Punctuation Unicode