Ch (digraph)

Ch

Ch is a digraph in the Roman alphabet and Uyghur(Uyghur Latin script). It is treated as a letter of its own in Chamorro, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Igbo, Quechua, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. In Vietnamese, it also used to be considered a letter for collation purposes but this is no longer common. In the Ossete Latin alphabet, it was used to write the sound /tʃ/.

Latin

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.

Upper Sorbian

"Ch" represents [kʰ] in Upper Sorbian.

English

In English, ch is most commonly pronounced as [tʃ], as in church.

In English words coming mostly from Greek chi, it is pronounced as [k], as in mechanics and chemistry.

In English words of French origin, "ch" represents [ʃ], as in machine.

In words of Scottish origin, it may be pronounced as [x], as in loch.

Breton

In Breton ch represents the [ʃ].

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

French

In native French words, ch represents [ʃ].

In words of Greek origin, it represents [k] as in archéologie.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ch represents [ʃ].

Occitan

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

Chamorro

Ch is the fourth letter of the Chamorro language and its sound is [ts].

Spanish

In Spanish as well as others, ch represents [tʃ].

Traditional Spanish alphabet

Structure

The letter ch is a digraph consisting of the sequence of Latin alphabet graphemes C and H; however, it represents a single phoneme (pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ] in both Castillian and Latin American, or a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] in Andalusian). It has its own name (che) and is traditionally considered a distinct letter of the alphabet; until 1994 it was treated as a single entity in Spanish collation order, inserted between C and D.

Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish alphabet used to consist of the following 29 letters: a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.^[1]

Collation

Since April 1994, when a vote in the 10th Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies ruled the adoption of the standard Latin alphabet collation rules, so that for purposes of collation the digraph 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-.^[2] In capitalized form, Ch is used at the beginning of a sentence (chiste "joke"), while CH or Ch can be used for a standalone letter in lists, etc.

Usage

The letter Ch is equal to other letters of the traditional Spanish alphabet (as is Ll). But before 1994 it came between C and D. Thus, the word "cacho" (English: piece) came after "caco" (English: thief) in an alphabetical list. Names beginning with Ch were listed in the same way in a phonebook, dictionary or encyclopedia. In a normal Español crossword, it takes up two squares, although in some old ones one can find the ch taking up only one square.

Italian

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

Interlingua

In Interlingua, ch represents the sound [k] before -e and -i.

Voiceless velar fricative

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

Dutch

Dutch ch was originally voiceless, while g was voiced. In the northern Netherlands (and standard Netherlands Dutch), 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'.

Slovak

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 (chrbtica "spine"), 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.

Czech

Structure

The letter ch is a digraph consisting of the sequence of Latin alphabet graphemes C and H, however it is a single phoneme (pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x]) and represents a single entity in Czech collation order, inserted between H and I. In capitalized form, Ch is used at the beginning of a sentence (Chechtal se. "He giggled."), while CH or Ch can be used for standalone letter in lists etc.

Usage

The letter Ch is equal to other letters of the Czech alphabet. It comes between H and I. Thus, the word chemie "chemistry" comes after fyzika "physics" in an alphabetical list. Names beginning with Ch are listed in the same way in a phonebook. In a crossword it takes only one square. Only few Czech words treat CH as two separate letters, e.g., puchoblík, from pucovat (German putzen "clean") and hoblík "plane".

History

In the 15th century, the Czech language used to contain many digraphs like modern Polish does but most of them were replaced by single letters with diacritic marks by the reform of Jan Hus. Besides ch, there is only one digraph used in the Czech language - dž, representing voiced postalveolar affricate. However, ch is the only Czech digraph which is treated as a single letter.

Polish

Ch has been used in the Polish language to represent the "soft h" /x/ as it is pronounced in the Polish word chleb "bread", and the h to represent "hard h", /ɦ/ where it is distinct, as it is pronounced in the Polish word hak "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/.

German

In German, ch represents two allophones: the voiceless velar fricative [x] when following back vowels or [a] (the so-called "Ach-Laut") and the voiceless palatal fricative [ç] in all other positions (the so-called "Ich-Laut"). A similar allophonic variation is assumed to have existed in Old English.

In German, it represents [k] before -s, and an initial Ch (which only appears in loanwords) may also be pronounced [k] in southern varieties, and is always pronounced [k] when a consonant follows the initial Ch.

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

Uyghur

CH ch (digraph), a digraph in Uyghur(Uyghur Latin script) ,CH ch represents tʃ in Uyghur Latin script.

Vietnamese

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

African languages

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

Chinese

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

Palauan

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

Alternate representations

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.

Pop culture

All principal characters created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños for his TV shows have names starting with Ch, including Chompiras, Dr. Chapatín, and perhaps most famously El Chavo and El Chapulín Colorado, a superhero whose costume has a "CH" inscribed by a heart (analogous to the way Superman's costume has an S inscribed on a diamond). Bolaños' artistic name was Chespirito, also with a Ch (Chespir would be a Spanish substandard pronunciation of Shakespeare; suffix -ito means "little").

See also

• Czech language
• Spanish language
• Two letter combinations

References

1. ^ Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, abecedario
2. ^ Association of Spanish Language Academies, official website