Ch (digraph)
Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Ladin, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian Latynka, and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly, ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such.
History
The digraph was first used in Latin during the 2nd century BC to transliterate the sound of the Greek letter chi in words borrowed from that language. In classical times, Greeks pronounced this as an aspirated voiceless velar plosive. In post-classical Greek this sound developed into a fricative. Since neither sound was found in native Latin words, in Late Latin the pronunciation occurred.In Old French, a language that had no or and represented by c, k, or qu, ch began to be used to represent the voiceless palatal plosive, which came from in some positions and later became and then. Now the digraph ch is used for all the aforementioned sounds, as shown below. The Old French usage of ch was also a model of several other digraphs for palatals or postalveolars: lh, nh, sh.
Use by language
Balto-Slavic languages
In Balto-Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, ch represents the voiceless velar fricative. The digraph is not considered a single letter in the Lithuanian alphabet, and represents the "soft h", as in the word choras 'choir'.. This digraph is used only in loanwords. It represents in Upper Sorbian.Czech
In Czech, the letter ch is a digraph consisting of the sequence of Latin alphabet graphemes C and H, however it is a single phoneme and represents a single entity in Czech collation order, inserted between H and I. In capitalized form, Ch is used at the beginning of a sentence, while CH or Ch can be used for standalone letter in lists etc. and only fully capitalized CH is used when the letter is a part of an abbreviation and in all-uppercase texts.In the Czech alphabet, the digraph Ch is treated as a letter equal to other letters. In Czech dictionaries, indexes, and other alphabetical lists, it has its own section, following that of words beginning with H and preceding that of words that begin with I. Thus, the word chemie will not be found in the C section of a Czech dictionary, nor the name Chalupa in the C section of the phonebook. The alphabetical order h ''ch is also observed when the combination ch occurs in median or final position: Praha precedes Prachatice, hod precedes hoch''.
Polish
Ch had been used in the Polish language to represent the "unvoiced h" as it is pronounced in the Polish word chleb "bread", and the h to represent "voiced h", where it is distinct, as it is pronounced in the Polish word hak "hook". Between World War I and World War II, the Polish intelligentsia used to emphasize the "voiced h" to aid themselves in proper spelling. In most present-day Polish dialects, however, ch and h are uniformly merged as. In a handful of words, ch itself becomes voiced, though this is usually realised as rather than.Slovak
In Slovak, ch represents, and more specifically in voiced position. At the beginning of a sentence it is used in two different variants: CH or Ch. It can be followed by a consonant, a vowel or diphthong.Only a few Slovak words treat CH as two separate letters, e.g., viachlasný, from viac and hlas.
In the Slovak alphabet, it comes between H and I.
Celtic languages
In Goidelic languages, ch represents the voiceless velar fricative. In Irish, ch stands for when broad and when slender. Word-initially it represents the lenition of. Examples: broad in chara "friend", loch "lake, loch", boichte "poorer"; slender in Chéadaoin "Wednesday", deich "ten".Breton has evolved a modified form of this digraph, c'h for representing, as opposed to ch, which stands for. In Welsh ch represents the voiceless uvular fricative. The digraph counts as a separate letter in the Welsh alphabet, positioned after c and before d; so, for example, chwilen 'beetle' comes after cymryd 'take' in Welsh dictionaries; similarly, Tachwedd 'November' comes after taclus 'tidy'.
Chamorro
Ch is the fifth letter of the Chamorro language and its sound is.The Chamorro Language has three different dialects - the Guamanian dialect, the Northern Mariana Islands dialect, and the Rotanese dialect. With the minor difference in dialect, the Guamanians have a different orthography from the other two dialects. In Guamanian orthography, both letters tend to get capitalized. The Northern Mariana Islands' & Rotanese orthography enforces the standard capitalization rule.
Germanic languages
In several Germanic languages, including German and romanized Yiddish, ch represents the voiceless velar fricative. In Rheinische Dokumenta, ch represents, as opposed to ch, which stands for.Dutch
ch was originally voiceless, while g was voiced. In the northern Netherlands, both ch and g are voiceless, while in the southern Netherlands and Flanders the voiceless/voiced distinction is upheld. The voiceless fricative is pronounced or in the north and in the south, while the voiced fricative is pronounced or in the north and in the south. This difference of pronunciation is called 'hard and soft g'.In some words of non-native origin, ch is pronounced as or , e.g. cheque , chips , China .
English
In English, ch is most commonly pronounced as, as in chalk, cheese, cherry, church, much, etc. When it represents word-medially or word-finally, it usually follows a consonant or two vowels. Elsewhere, this sound is usually spelled tch, with a few exceptions.If a segment of a word originates from Greek or Italian, Ch can also be pronounced as, likely stemming from the letter chi. This includes Greek-derivative words—like ache, architect, choir, school, stomach, mechanics, chemistry and character, Italian-derivative words—like chiaroscuro, scherzo and zucchini, Romanian-derivative words—like Bucharest, Chișinău, Wallachia, Slavic-derivative words—like Czechia, Czechoslovakia, Lachia, German-derivative words—like Munich, Reich, Zurich — and Hebrew-derivative words—like Jericho.
In some English words of French origin, "ch" represents, as in charade, machine, chivalry and nonchalant. Through hyperforeignism, a type of hypercorrection, this pronunciation also occurs in a few loanwords from other sources, like machete and pistachio.
In certain dialects of British English ch is often pronounced in two words: sandwich and spinach, and also in place names, such as Greenwich and Norwich.
In words of Scots origin it may be pronounced as , as in loch and clachan. In words of Hebrew or Yiddish origin it may be pronounced as .
The digraph can also be silent, as in Crichton, currach, drachm, yacht and traditionally in schism.
German
In German, ch normally represents two allophones: the voiceless velar fricative following a, o or u, and the voiceless palatal fricative following any other vowel or a consonant. A similar allophonic variation is thought to have existed in Old English.The sequence "chs" is normally pronounced, as in sechs and Fuchs.
An initial "ch" may be pronounced , or . It is always pronounced when followed by l or r, as in Chlor or Christus.
Swedish
In Swedish, ch represents /ɧ/ and /ɕ/ in loanwords such as choklad and check. These sounds come from former and , respectively. In the conjunction och, ch is pronounced or silent.Hungarian
The digraph ch is not considered part of the Hungarian alphabet, but it has historically been used for , as in English and Spanish, and this use has been preserved in family names: Széchenyi, Madách. It is also retained in family names of German origin, where it is pronounced : Aulich. The digraph is also used in some loan words, such as technika or jacht where it is pronounced .Romance languages
In Catalan ch represents final sound. In the past it was widely used, but nowadays it is only present in some surnames. In medieval Catalan it was occasionally used to represent sound.In native French words, ch represents as in chanson. In most words of Greek origin, it represents as in archéologie, chœur, chirographier; but chimie, chirurgie, and chimère have, as does anarchiste.
In Italian and Romanian, ch represents the voiceless velar plosive before -e and -i.
In Romansh ch represents before front vowels and before back vowels.
In Occitan, ch represents, but in some dialects it is.
In Portuguese, ch represents, with some few speakers in northeastern mainland Portugal retaining the archaic .
Spanish
Ch is pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate in both Castillian and American Spanish, or a voiceless postalveolar fricative in Andalusian.Ch is traditionally considered a distinct letter of the Spanish alphabet, called che. In the 2010 Orthography of the Spanish Language, Ch is no longer considered a letter of its own but rather a digraph consisting of two letters.
Until 1994 ch was treated as a single letter in Spanish collation order, inserted between C and D; in this way, mancha was after manco and before manda. However, an April 1994 vote in the 10th Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies adopted the standard international collation rules, so ch is now considered a sequence of two distinct characters, and dictionaries now place words starting with ch- between those starting with ce- and ci-, as there are no words that start with cf- or cg- in Spanish. Similarly, mancha now precedes manco in alphabetical order.