digraphs

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> 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.
It is the norm when transliterating Russian and other Cyrillic
languages, at least for an English-speaking non-scientific audience
(e.g. "Kazakh" from Russian _Казах_). This is of course because Russian
has a post-alveolar affricative /tɕ/ as well, transcribed "ch" or "tch".

--
Tristan.