Re: digraphs (was: Rhotics)

In the last episode, (On Saturday 07 July 2007 13:50:20), Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > 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".
True enough, though before I took an interest in Judaism I confess to thinking
of Hebrew words like that as being pronounced /barutS/ and /l@tSaim/ :-(. Oh,
and /tSutspa/ :-/ ). In my defence, I learnt the meaning of chutzpah long
before I learnt how to pronounce it ;-)
>
> 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.
Really? I would have thought that would be the natural choice. It's not used
in English, so it's a prime candidate for a transliteration that will not
make people think of the wrong sound. (And IIRC, Russian words like "kholkoz"
(collective farm) are almost always transliterated "kh" for /x/).

Jeff
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