Ch (digraph)

The digraph was first used in Latin since the 2nd century B.C. to transliterate the sound of the Greek letter chi in words borrowed from that language. In classical times, Greeks pronounced this as an aspirated voiceless velar plosive [kʰ]. In post-classical Greek (Koine and Modern) this sound developed into a fricative [x]. Since neither sound was found in native Latin words (with some exceptions like pulcher 'beautiful', where the original sound [k] was influenced by [l] or [r]), in Late Latin the pronunciation [k] occurred.

In Old French, a language that had no [kʰ] or [x] and represented [k] by c, k, or qu, ch began to be used to represent the voiceless palatal plosive [c], which came from [k] in some positions and later became [tʃ] and then [ʃ]. Now the digraph ch is used for all the aforementioned sounds, as shown below. The Old French usage of ch was also a model of several other digraphs for palatals or postalveolars: lh (digraph), nh (digraph), sh (digraph).

In the Goidelic languages, several Germanic, and Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, and others, ch represents the voiceless velar fricative [x]. Additionally, "ch" is frequently used in transliterating into many European languages from Greek, Hebrew, Yiddish, and various others.

Breton has evolved a modified form of this digraph, c'h for representing [x], as opposed to ch, which stands for [ʃ]. In Manx, "ch" stands for [x], while [tʃ] is represented by çh.

In Rheinische Dokumenta, ch represents [x], as opposed to ch, which stands for [ç].

In Welsh, it represents the voiceless uvular fricative [χ].

In English, ch is most commonly pronounced as [tʃ], as in chalk, cheese, cherry, church, much, etc.

Ch can also be pronounced as [k], as in ache, choir, school and stomach. Most words with this pronunciation of ch find their origin in Greek words with the letter chi, like mechanics, chemistry and character. Others, like chiaroscuro, scherzo and zucchini, come from Italian.

In English words of French origin, "ch" represents [ʃ], as in charade, machine, and nonchalant. Due to hypercorrection, this pronunciation also occurs in a few loanwords from other sources, like machete (from Spanish) and pistachio (from Italian).

In certain dialects of British English ch is often pronounced [dʒ] in two words: sandwich and spinach, and also in place names, such as Greenwich and Norwich.

In words of Scots origin it may be pronounced as [x] (or [k]), as in loch and clachan. In words of Hebrew or Yiddish origin it may be pronounced as [χ] (or [x]), as in challah.

The digraph can also be silent, as in Crichton, currach, drachm, yacht and traditionally in schism.

In Breton ch represents the [ʃ].

This digraph should not be confused with c'h [x].

In Catalan ch represents final [k] sound. In the past it was widely used, but nowadays it is only used in some surnames. In medieval Catalan it was occasionally used to represent [tʃ] sound.

Ch is the fifth letter of the Chamorro language and its sound is [ts]. The Chamorro Language has three different dialects - the Guamanian dialect, the Northern Mariana Islands dialect, and the Rotanese dialect. With the minor difference in dialect, the Guamanians have a different orthography from the other two dialects. In Guamanian orthography, both letters tend to get capitalized (eg.: CHamoru). The Northern Mariana Islands' & Rotanese orthography enforces the standard capitalization rule (eg.: Chamorro).

In Mandarin Chinese ch is used in Pinyin to represent an aspirated voiceless retroflex affricate /tʂʰ/.

Dutch ch was originally voiceless, while g was voiced. In the northern Netherlands, both ch and g are voiceless, while in the southern Netherlands and Flanders the voiceless/voiced distinction is upheld. The voiceless fricative is pronounced [x] or [χ] in the north and [ç] in the south, while the voiced fricative is pronounced [ɣ] in the north (i.e. the northern parts of the area that still has this distinction) and [ʝ] in the south. This difference of pronunciation is called 'hard and soft g'.

In native French words, ch represents [ʃ] as in chanson (song).

In most words of Greek origin, it represents [k] as in archéologie, chœur, chirographier; but chimie, chirurgie, and chimère have [ʃ], as does anarchiste.

In German, ch normally represents two allophones: the voiceless velar fricative [x] (or [χ]) following a, o or u (called Ach-Laut), and the voiceless palatal fricative [ç] following any other vowel or a consonant (called Ich-Laut). A similar allophonic variation is thought to have existed in Old English.

The sequence "chs" is normally pronounced [ks], as in sechs (six) and Fuchs (fox).

An initial "ch" (which only appears in loaned and dialectical words) may be pronounced [k] (common in southern varieties), [ʃ] (common in western varieties) or [ç] (common in northern and western varieties). It is always pronounced [k] when followed by l or r, as in Christus (Christ) or Chlor (chlorine).

The Rheinische Dokumenta writing system uses ch, for the voiceless palatal fricative [ç], while ch represents [x].

The digraph ch is not properly speaking part of the Hungarian alphabet, but it has historically been used for [tʃ], as in English and Spanish (as with Szechenyi family name), and is found in a few words of Greek or other foreign origin, such as technik, where it is pronounced the same as h, somewhat as in Polish.

In Interlingua, ch is pronounced /ʃ/ in words of French origin (e.g. 'chef' = /ʃef/ meaning "chief" or "chef"), /k/ in words of Greek and Italian origin (e.g. "choro" = /koro/ meaning "chorus"), and more rarely /t͡ʃ/ in words of English or Spanish origin (e.g. "cochi" /kot͡ʃi/ meaning "car" or "coach"). Ch may be pronounced either /t͡ʃ/ or /ʃ/ depending on the speaker in many cases (e.g. "chocolate" may be pronounced either /t͡ʃokolate/ or /ʃokolate/).

In Irish, ch stands for /x/ when broad and /ç/ (or /h/ between vowels) when slender. Examples: broad in chara /ˈxaɾˠə/ "friend" (lenited), loch /ɫ̪ɔx/ "lake, lough", boichte /bˠɔxtʲə/ "poorer"; slender in Chéadaoin /ˈçeːd̪ˠiːnʲ/ "Wednesday" (lenited), deich /dʲɛç/ "ten".

In Italian, ch represents the voiceless velar plosive [k] before -e and -i.

Ch was selected to represent [t͡ɕ] in the Kazakh Latin alphabet. It was considered a separate letter, and was the 32nd and last letter of the alphabet in the 2018 amendment.

As part of the switch of Kazakh from Cyrillic to Latin, the initial proposed Latin alphabet in 2017 (implemented by Presidential Decree 569 of 26 October 2017) tried to avoid the use of accent marks and digraphs in representing certain phonemes. Initially, /t͡ɕ/ would have been represented by ⟨C'⟩.[1] This was revised by Presidential Decree 637 of 19 February 2018, replacing the apostrophe with the diagraph ⟨Ch⟩.[2][3]

However, in the later 2019, under president Tokayev's amendment suggestions, the Ch has replaced by Ç in order to keep compatibility with other Turkic languages.[4]

The Romans used ch to transliterate the sound of the Greek letter chi in words borrowed from that language. In classical times, Greeks pronounced this as an aspirated voiceless velar plosive [kʰ]. In post-classical Greek (Koine and Modern) this sound developed into a fricative.

Ch is used in the Lithuanian language to represent the "soft h" /x/, in word choras [ˈxɔrɐs̪] "choir". This digraph is not considered a single letter in the Lithuanian alphabet. This digraph is used only in loanwords.

Ch was used in the Massachusett orthography developed by John Eliot to represent a sound similar to /tʃ/ and in the modern orthography in use by some Wampanoag tribes for the same sound. In both systems, the digraph ch is considered a single letter.

In Xhosa and Zulu, ch represents the voiceless aspirated velar dental click [kǀʰ].

In Occitan, ch represents [tʃ], but in some dialects it is [ts].

In the Ossetic Latin alphabet, ch was used to write the sound [tsʰ].

In Palauan, ch represents a glottal stop [ʔ].

Ch has been used in the Polish language to represent the "soft h" /x/ as it is pronounced in the Polish word chleb^{pronunciation}  "bread", and the h to represent "hard h", /ɦ/ where it is distinct, as it is pronounced in the Polish word hak^{pronunciation}  "hook". Between World War I and World War II, the Polish intelligentsia used to exaggerate the "hardness" of the hard Polish h to aid themselves in proper spelling. In most present-day Polish dialects, however, ch and h are uniformly collapsed as /x/.

In Portuguese, ch represents [ʃ].

ch is pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate [tʃ] in both Castillian and Hispanic American, or a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] in Andalusian.

Ch is traditionally considered a distinct letter of the Spanish alphabet, called che. In the 2010 Orthography of the Spanish Language, Ch is no longer considered a letter of its own but rather a diagraph consisting of two letters.[5]

Until 1994 ch was treated as a single letter in Spanish collation order, inserted between C and D; in this way, mancha was after manco and before manda. However, an April 1994 vote in the 10th Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies adopted the standard international collation rules, so ch is now considered a sequence of two distinct characters, and dictionaries now place words starting with ch- between those starting with cg- and ci-.[6] Similarly, mancha now precedes manco in alphabetical order.

In Slovak, ch represents /x/, and more specifically [ɣ] in voiced position. At the beginning of a sentence it is used in two different variants: CH or Ch. It can be followed by a consonant (chladný "cold"), a vowel (chémia "chemistry") or diphthong (chiazmus "chiasmus").

Only few Slovak words treat CH as two separate letters, e.g., viachlasný (e.g. "multivocal" performance), from viac ("multi") and hlas ("voice").

In the Slovak alphabet, it comes between H and I.

In Swedish, ch represents /ɧ/ and /ɕ/ in loanwords such as choklad and check. These sounds come from former [ʃ] and [tʃ], respectively. In the conjunction och (and), ch is pronounced [k] or silent.

"Ch" represents [kʰ] in Upper Sorbian.

Ch represents [tʃ] in Uyghur Latin script.

Ch represents [tʃ] in the Uzbek alphabet. It is considered a separate letter, and is the 28th letter of the alphabet.

In Vietnamese, ch represents the voiceless palatal plosive [c] in the initial position. In the final position, the pronunciation is identical to the final -k: [k].

In Welsh ch represents the voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. The digraph counts as a separate letter in the Welsh alphabet, positioned after c and before d; so, for example, chwilen 'beetle' comes after cymryd 'take' in Welsh dictionaries; similarly, Tachwedd 'November' comes after taclus 'tidy'.

International Morse code provides a unitary code for Ch used in several non-English languages, namely — — — —.

In the Czech extension to Braille the letter Ch is represented as the dot pattern ⠻. English literary braille also has a single cell dedicated to ⟨ch⟩ (dots 1–6), which stands for "child" in isolation, but this is considered a single-cell contraction rather than a separate letter.

In computing, Ch is represented as a sequence of C and H, not as a single character; only the historical KOI-8 ČS2 encoding contained Ch as a single character.