Hebrew Letter Het

It is a consonant letter, not a word by itself. You may also see its name written ḥet or khet. In Hebrew text, read it as part of the surrounding word.

Its ancestors served the same basic job: recording consonant sounds. The alphabetic tradition behind it reaches the early second millennium BCE, when West Semitic writers adapted Egyptian signs. That is the ancestry of the writing system, not the date of today's square ח.

Hebrew adopted a Canaanite/Phoenician script in the twelfth or eleventh century BCE. The square form developed through Aramaic after the Babylonian exile, when Judeans had been displaced to Babylonia. Samaritan writing continued the older Hebrew script branch.

Why does ח sound like כ?

Modern Israeli Hebrew commonly merges their sounds, not their spelling. This comparison concerns כ pronounced kh, rather than k.

Arabic-speaking and most Aramaic-speaking Jewish traditions pronounce ח with friction deep in the throat, called a pharyngeal sound. European Jewish traditions make the sound farther forward, near the soft palate. Some Persian-speaking communities pronounce it like h.

Transliteration means writing Hebrew with Latin letters. Precise systems use ḥ for ח; community spellings may use ch or h and can reflect pronunciation. Follow the spelling system used by your course or text.