Ḫāʾ, Khāʾ, or Xe (خ, transliterated as (DIN-31635), (Hans Wehr), kh (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 ṯāʼ, ḏāl, ḍād, ẓāʼ, ġayn). It is based on the ḥāʾ  ح. It represents the sound [x] or [χ] in Modern Standard Arabic. The pronunciation of خ 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 ḥāʾ. South Semitic also kept the phoneme separate, and it appears as South Arabian ḫ, Ge'ez Ḫarm ኀ. Its numerical value is 600 (see Abjad numerals). In most European languages, it is mostly romanized as the digraph kh.[1]

Ḫāʾ
Arabic
خ
Phonemic representationx, χ
Position in alphabet24
Numerical value600
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
GreekΧ
LatinX
CyrillicХ
Ḫāʾ خاء
خ
Usage
Writing systemArabic script
TypeAbjad
Language of originArabic language
Sound valuesx, χ
Alphabetical position7
History
Development
𐤇
  • 𐡇‎
    • 𐢊
      • ح
        • خ
Other
Writing directionRight-to-left
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ח׳.

The most common transliteration in English is "kh", e.g. Khartoum (الخرطوم al-Kharṭūm), Sheikh (شيخ), Kazakhstan (كازاخستان).

Ḫāʾ is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Position in word Isolated Final Medial Initial
Glyph form:
(Help)
خ ـخ ـخـ خـ

In the Quran

edit

The letter ḫāʾ is mentioned 2,497 times in the Quran, with 31 āyahs starting with the letter ḫāʾ, but never ends with the letter ḫāʾ.

Character encodings

edit
Character information
Preview خ
Unicode name ARABIC LETTER KHAH ARABIC LETTER KHAH
ISOLATED FORM
ARABIC LETTER KHAH
FINAL FORM
ARABIC LETTER KHAH
INITIAL FORM
ARABIC LETTER KHAH
MEDIAL FORM
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 1582 U+062E 65189 U+FEA5 65190 U+FEA6 65191 U+FEA7 65192 U+FEA8
UTF-8 216 174 D8 AE 239 186 165 EF BA A5 239 186 166 EF BA A6 239 186 167 EF BA A7 239 186 168 EF BA A8
Numeric character reference خ خ ﺥ ﺥ ﺦ ﺦ ﺧ ﺧ ﺨ ﺨ

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ "5.3: Letter Khaa". Humanities LibreTexts. 2024-07-19. Retrieved 2024-09-18.