Ḫāʾ | |
---|---|
Arabic | خ |
Phonemic representation | x, χ |
Position in alphabet | 24 |
Numerical value | 600 |
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician |
Ḫāʾ | |
---|---|
خ | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Arabic script |
Type | Abjad |
Language of origin | Arabic language |
Phonetic usage | x, χ |
Alphabetical position | 7 |
History | |
Development |
|
Other | |
Writing direction | Right-to-left |
Arabic alphabet |
---|
Arabic script |
Ḫāʾ, Khāʾ, or Xe (خ, transliterated as ḫ (
DIN-31635), ḵ (
Hans Wehr), kh (
ALA-LC) or ẖ (
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
,
Ge'ez Ḫarm 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 ח׳.
The most common transliteration in English is "kh", e.g. Khartoum (الخرطوم al-Kharṭūm), Sheikh (شيخ).
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 |
Preview | خ | ﺥ | ﺦ | ﺧ | 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 |