letter Haa# حاء

The best way to explain the sound of this letter is saying that it sounds "like English H, but stronger".

It is called a "pharingeal phreakative". This means that it is made by almost closing the upper part of the troath and forcing air there. In some Moroccan dialects, the air sometimes gets compressed between the back of the tongue and the back of the palate, making a sound like the CH in german "Ich". So, it may sound somehow like SH. But the true Arabic (sh) ش sound is made with the front of the tongue against the front of the palate, so it never sounds like H ح.

Writing the H ح with Roman Letters

Most people use "h". The problem with this is that an "h" might also stand for a ه, which is much softer. For an Arab these are very different sounds, and "haram" with a hard ح and "haram" with a soft ه have completely different meanings.

A possible solution would be using underlined H for the stronger ح and normal H for the weaker ه. This is OK for books, but does not work on the web because of underlined links, or in a SMS message. That's why some Arabs sometimes use a figure "7" in e-mail: it looks vaguely like a ح, and cannot be confused with the ه.

Copyright (c) 2001-2009 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/q_h.en.html
Last revised: 2008-03-31

Writing the Haa# حاء

Alphabet Table

writing_arabic -> alphabet -> letter Haa#