or (, transliterated as (DIN-31635), (Hans Wehr), (ALA-LC) or (ISO 233)) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It is based on the . It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪍, South Arabian , and Ge'ez .
It represents the sound or in Modern Standard Arabic. The pronunciation of is very similar to German, Irish, and Polish unpalatalised "ch", Russian х (Cyrillic Kha), Greek χ and Peninsular Spanish and Southern Cone "j". In name and shape, it is a variant of . South Semitic also kept the phoneme separate, and it appears as South Arabian , Ge'ez ኀ. Its numerical value is 600 (see Abjad numerals). In most European languages, it is mostly romanized as the digraph kh.
When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as .
The most common transliteration in English is "kh", e.g. Khartoum ( al-Kharṭūm), Sheikh ().
is written is several ways depending on its position in the word:
Ḫā has no derivatives.
Character encodings
See also Arabic phonology
References