Dave opened this issue on May 04, 2006 · 69 posts
dphoadley posted Thu, 04 May 2006 at 1:53 PM
The letter ח is the Hebrew letter Khet (Het) but pronounced with the glottis in the back of the throat, and has a phonetic value similar to the ch in the scottish word Loch. When transposing words from Arabic that use it's alphbetical phonetic equivolent, the usual practice is to use the combination Kh to designate it's sound (however, in English, it's many times been transposed as a Ch, but that often give the misleading impression that it's phonetic value is the same as Church or Chowder, rather than LoCH).
In modern Hebrew, when transposing Spanish names and words that use the j (whota), the ח (khet) is often substituted, but then Israelis tend to pronounce such words as Juan and Marajuana with a hard phonetic, so that it comes out as khuwan (glottal H) and Marakhwana (again gloutal H).
I hope this was helpful.
BTW, I've downloaded many of your props, and find them very useful.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley