Kha, Khe, Xe or Ha (Х х; italics: ''Х х'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

. It looks the same as the Latin letter X (X x ''X x''), in both uppercase and lowercase, both roman and italic forms, and was derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

letter Chi, which also bears a resemblance to both the Latin X and Kha. It commonly represents the

voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''lo ...

, similar to how some Scottish speakers pronounce the in “loch”, but has different pronunciations in different languages. Kha is romanised as for Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, and Tajik, and as for Belarusian and Polish, while being romanised as for Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Kazakh. It is also romanised as for Spanish.

History

The Cyrillic letter Kha was derived from the Greek letter Chi (Χ χ). The name of Kha in the

Early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...

was (''xěrŭ''). In the Cyrillic numeral system, Kha has a value of 600.

Usage

Russian

Kha is the twenty-third letter of the

Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (, or , more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ) ...

. It represents the

unless it is before a palatalizing vowel, when it represents .

Ossetian

Kha represents the

voiceless uvular fricative The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdo ...

in Ossetian. The digraph ⟨хъ⟩ represents the

voiceless uvular plosive The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in the ...

Belarusian

Kha is also an alternative transliteration of the letter Ḫāʼ in the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

. This was used in Belarusian Arabic script, corresponding to the above Cyrillic letter.

Ukrainian

Kha is the twenty-sixth letter of the

Ukrainian alphabet The Ukrainian alphabet () is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th ...

. It represents the voiceless velar fricative /x/.

Aleut

Aleut Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

, kha represents . Kha with inverted breve (Х̑ х̑) represents the

().

Figurative meanings of "хѣръ"

* Because of the shape of the letter X, its name kher was often used to refer to something cross-shaped: Dahl mentions "the game of kheriki-oniki" ( noughts and crosses) and the expression "legs like kher" to refer to the

genu valgum Genu valgum, commonly called "knock-knee", is a condition in which the knees angle in and touch each other when the human leg, legs are straightened. Individuals with severe valgus deformity, valgus deformities are typically unable to touch thei ...

deformity (knock knee). From this also comes the word pokherovat (originally, to cross out crosswise; cf. in N. S. Leskov:

Vladika Vladika or Wladika (, ) is an informal Slavic title and address for bishops in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches, specifically the Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and American Orthodox Churches. In Old Church Slavonic, th ...

crossed out the consistory's decision on the appointment of the investigation with a kher. * Being the first letter of the vulgar and obscene word for the male genital organ, the word kher has been actively used as its euphemism since the 19th century. As a result, by the 1990s in the USSR, the word "kher" and its derivatives (e.g., "pokherit") were perceived as taboo by many people, as the original names of Cyrillic letters had been forgotten by the majority of the population. This fact has also affected the use of the word "kher" in the post-Soviet era, despite the change of attitude towards obscene vocabulary. Nevertheless, the portal Gramota.ru notes that "the word kher and all derivatives of it do not belong to obscene words".

Related letters and other similar characters

*Χ χ : Greek letter Chi *H h : Latin letter H *J j : Latin letter J *X x : Latin letter X * : Arabic or Persian letter Ḫāʾ *Һ һ : Cyrillic letter Ha *Ѯ ѯ : Cyrillic letter Ksi *ख़ : Devanagari letter Ḵẖa *ਖ਼ : Gurumukhi letter Ḵẖa

Computing codes

References

External links

* * {{Cyrillic navbox Cyrillic letters