Kha (Cyrillic)

Kha or Ha (Х х; italics: Х х) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. 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 letter Chi, which also bears a resemblance to both the Latin X and Kha.

It commonly represents the voiceless velar fricative /x/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "loch".

Kha is usually romanized as ⟨kh⟩ when romanizing East Slavic languages and romanized as ⟨h⟩ when romanizing South Slavic languages.

History

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

The name of Kha in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was хѣръ (xěrŭ).

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Kha had a value of 600.

Usage

Russian

Kha is the twenty-third (if Yo is included) letter of the Russian alphabet. It represents the consonant /x/ unless it is before a palatalizing vowel when it represents /xʲ/.

Belarusian

Kha is also an alternative transliteration of the letter خ Ḫāʼ in the Arabic alphabet. This was used in Belarusian Arabic script, corresponding to the above Cyrillic letter.

Kha (Indic)

Kha is the second consonant of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic scripts, kha is derived from the Brahmi letter , which is probably derived from the Aramaic ("Q").

Mathematics

Āryabhaṭa numeration

Aryabhata used Devanagari letters for numbers, very similar to the Greek numerals, even after the invention of Indian numerals. The values of the different forms of ख are:

History

The original Indic letter Kha is attested in three different forms. The first is in standard Brahmi, , the second in the Brahmi variant, Tocharian, also known as slanting Brahmi. The third form of Kha, in Kharoshthi (𐨑) was probably derived from Aramaic separately from the Brahmi letter.

Brahmi Ka

The Brahmi letter , kha, is derived from the Aramaic , Q, and is related to the modern Latin Q and archaic Greek Koppa.

Kha (Bengali)

The Bengali letter খ is derived from the Siddhaṃ , and is marked by the lack of a horizontal head line, unlike its Devanagari counterpart, ख. The inherent vowel of Bengali consonant letters is /ɔ/, so the bare letter খ will sometimes be transliterated as "kho" instead of "kha". Adding okar, the "o" vowel mark, খো, gives a reading of /kho/.

Like all Indic consonants, খ can be modified by marks to indicate another (or no) vowel than its inherent "a".

খ in Bengali-using languages

খ is used as a basic consonant character in all of the major Bengali script orthographies, including Bengali and Assamese.

Conjuncts with খ

Bengali খ does not exhibit any irregular conjunct ligatures, beyond adding the standard trailing forms of ব, য ya-phala, and র ra-phala, and the leading repha form of র.

See also

References