![]() Dionysius Thrax in the second century BC records that the letter name was still pronounced heta (ἥτα), correctly explaining this irregularity by stating "in the old days the letter Η served to stand for the rough breathing, as it still does with the Romans." Long e ![]() From this sign later developed the sign for rough breathing or spiritus asper, which brought back the marking of the IPA: sound into the standardized post-classical ( polytonic) orthography. In the southern Italian colonies of Heracleia and Tarentum, the letter shape was reduced to a "half-heta" lacking the right vertical stem (Ͱ). Other regional variants of the Greek alphabet ( epichoric alphabets), in dialects that still preserved the sound IPA:, employed various glyph shapes for consonantal heta side by side with the new vocalic eta for some time. This also gave rise to the Latin alphabet with its letter H. In this function, it was borrowed in the 8th century BC by the Etruscan and other Old Italic alphabets, which were based on the Euboean form of the Greek alphabet. The letter shape 'H' was originally used in most Greek dialects to represent the voiceless glottal fricative IPA.
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