Article: ON LANGUAGE: Out of the Guttural

Mark Krupnick
Forward
07-15-1994
ON LANGUAGE: Out of the Guttural.

We ended last week's column, which began with the word "pachech," with a discussion of the different notations in various European languages for the guttural "kh"-sound and with the problem that this creates in transcribing Hebrew and Yiddish words containing the letters ??? and ??? into Roman characters when writing in English. Should we write "Hanukkah" or "Chanukkah"? "Halachic" or "halakhic"? "Cheder," "heder" or "kheder"? With "h" and "ch" we run the risk that the non-Jewish, or even the unknowledgeable Jewish reader, will mispronounce them by giving them their normal English values. But even with "kh," which has no ...

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