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Concept
Eta
Summary
Eta 'iːtə,_'eɪtə (uppercase , lowercase ; ἦτα ē̂ta ɛ̂ːta or ήτα ita ˈita) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel i. Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative h in most dialects, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect of Ancient Greek was a long open-mid front unrounded vowel ɛː, raised to i in hellenistic Greek, a process known as iotacism or itacism.
In the ancient Attic number system (Herodianic or acrophonic numbers), the number 100 was represented by "", because it was the initial of ΗΕΚΑΤΟΝ, the ancient spelling of ἑκατόν = "one hundred". In the later system of (Classical) Greek numerals eta represents 8.
Eta was derived from the Phoenician letter heth . Letters that arose from eta include the Latin H and the Cyrillic letters И and Й.
Heta (letter)
The letter shape 'H' was originally used in most Greek dialects to represent the voiceless glottal fricative 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. This also gave rise to the Latin alphabet with its letter H.
Other regional variants of the Greek alphabet (epichoric alphabets), in dialects that still preserved the sound h, employed various glyph shapes for consonantal heta side by side with the new vocalic eta for some time.
In the southern Italian colonies of Heracleia and Tarentum, the letter shape was reduced to a "half-heta" lacking the right vertical stem (Ͱ). From this sign later developed the sign for rough breathing or spiritus asper, which brought back the marking of the h sound into the standardized post-classical (polytonic) orthography.
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.
Official source
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