英単語

Hの意味・使い方・発音

H

英 [eɪtʃ] 美 [etʃ]
  • n. アルファベットの8番目の文字、小文字のh
  • symb.水素(化学元素)

英語の語源


H
eighth letter of the alphabet; it comes from Phoenician, via Greek and Latin. In Phoenician it originally had a rough guttural sound like German Reich or Scottish loch. In Greek at first it had the value of Modern English -h-, and with this value it passed into the Latin alphabet via Greek colonies in Italy. Subsequently in Greek it came to be used for a long "e" sound; the "h" sound being indicated by a fragment of the letter, which later was reduced to the aspiration mark. In Germanic it was used for the voiceless breath sound when at the beginning of words, and in the middle or at the end of words for the rough guttural sound, which later came to be written -gh.

The sound became totally silent in Vulgar Latin and in the languages that emerged from it; thus the letter was omitted in Old French and Italian, but it was restored pedantically in French and Middle English spelling, and often later in English pronunciation. Thus Modern English has words ultimately from Latin with missing -h- (able, from Latin habile); with a silent -h- (heir, hour); with a formerly silent -h- now often vocalized (humble, humor, herb); and even a few with an excrescent -h- fitted in confusion to words that never had one (hostage, hermit). Relics of the formerly unvoiced -h- persist in pedantic insistence on an historical (object) and in obsolete mine host.

The pronunciation "aitch" was in Old French (ache "name of the letter H"), and is from a presumed Late Latin *accha (compare Italian effe, elle, emme), with the central sound approximating the rough, guttural value of the letter in Germanic. In earlier Latin the letter was called ha. The use in digraphs (as in -sh-, -th-) goes back to the ancient Greek alphabet, which used it in -ph-, -th-, -kh- until -H- took on the value of a long "e" and the digraphs acquired their own characters. The letter passed into Roman use before this evolution, and thus retained there more of its original Semitic value.

例文


1. Edwin H .Conger was envoy extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.
エドウィン? H .コングは特命全権公使である。

2.The chemicalフォーミュラfor water is H 2 O.
水の化学分子式は H 2 O.

3.The second quotation is from an essay that D H Lawrence wrote in the nineteen-twenties.
第2段引用文はD. H .ローレンスが1920年代に書いた記事。

4.D H Lawrence immortalised her in his novel "Women in Love ".D. H .
ローレンスは小説『恋する女』で彼女を不朽のキャラクターにした。

5.By the third lap Kinkead had touched 289 m.p. h .
3周目になると、金基徳の車速は時速289マイルに達した。

頭文字