Re: digraphs (was: Rhotics)

> why he then chose to use "ch" for /x/ is less clear:

It's not at all unclear, really.  That sound is almost always transcribed as
"ch" in English transliterations of foreign words, most notably from Hebrew
(baruch, l'chaim) and Yiddish (chutzpah), and we have of course inherited
the spelling unchanged from many German names, such as "Bach".

What would you suggest he use instead?  It would never occur to a
non-linguist Anglophone to read <x> as /x/, only as /ks/ medially and /z/
initially.  The digraph <kh> would arguably have been better; it is often
used in the pronunciation guides of American dictionaries for /x/.  But I've
hardly ever seen it in transliterations.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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