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High class consonant · letter 41 of 44

ห ho hip

ห (ho hip) is a high-class consonant named after หีบ, “chest”. At the start of a syllable it is /h/, written h in RTGS, and it does not end syllables.

See it in 61 fontsAll 44 consonants
หห หีบho hip · chest
Thai name
ห หีบ · ho hip
Name word
หีบ, chest
Class
High class
At the start of a syllable
/h/ · RTGS h
At the end of a syllable
not used
Unicode
U+0E2B · THAI CHARACTER HO HIP
In HTML
ห or ห
Kedmanee key
S
Pattachote key
V

How it sounds

The high-class h. ฮ is its low-class partner.

Written silently before ง, ญ, น, ม, ย, ร, ล or ว, it moves the syllable into the high class: หมา ma (dog) has a rising tone, while มา ma (to come) has a mid tone. Thai calls this ห นำ, the leading h.

One other letter has the same sound at the start of a syllable: ฮ ho nokhuk (low).

Easy to mistake for ฬ lo chula: compare them at a large size in the grid below.

Class and tone

With no mark, a high-class letter gives a rising tone in a live syllable and a low tone in a dead one. Mai ek gives low and mai tho falling; the other two marks are not used.

Syllables with ห and the vowel า
SpellingSyllableTone
No mark, live syllable (long vowel)หาRising
No mark, dead syllable, short vowelหะLow
No mark, dead syllable, long vowelหากLow
Mai ekห่าLow
Mai thoห้าFalling
Mai tri–not used with this class
Mai chattawa–not used with this class

The syllables show the rule, not words to learn. The tone rules explain live and dead syllables.

Words with ห

ThaiRTGSMeaning
หาhato look for
หกhoksix
หัวhuahead
ห้องhongroom
หมาmadog

RTGS shows neither tone nor vowel length; type a word into the font tester to see it in every font.

ห in every font

The letter in each of the 61 families you can download here, in its regular style. Looped faces start the stroke from a small circle; loopless ones leave it out. Each card opens the family’s page.