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Ḫāʾ, Khāʾ, or Xe (خ, transliterated as ḫ (DIN-31635), ḵ (Hans Wehr), kh (ALA-LC) or ẖ (ISO 233)) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʼ, ḏāl, ḍād, ẓāʼ, ġayn). It is based on the ḥāʾ ح. It represents the sound [x]or[χ]inModern Standard Arabic. The pronunciation of خ is very similar to German, Irish, and Polish unpalatalised "ch", Russian х (Cyrillic Kha), Greek χ and Peninsular Spanish and Southern Cone "j". In name and shape, it is a variant of ḥāʾ. South Semitic also kept the phoneme separate, and it appears as South Arabian 
, Ge'ez Ḫarm ኀ. Its numerical value is 600 (see Abjad numerals). In most European languages, it is mostly romanized as the digraph kh.
| Ḫāʾ | |
|---|---|
| Arabic | خ |
| Phonemic representation | x, χ |
| Position in alphabet | 24 |
| Numerical value | 600 |
| Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | |
| Ḫāʾ | |
|---|---|
| خ | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Arabic script |
| Type | Abjad |
| Language of origin | Arabic language |
| Sound values | x, χ |
| Alphabetical position | 7 |
| History | |
| Development |
|
| Other | |
| Writing direction | Right-to-left |
| This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ח׳.
The most common transliteration in English is "kh", e.g. Khartoum (الخرطوم al-Kharṭūm), Sheikh (شيخ), Kazakhstan (كازاخستان).
Ḫāʾ is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
| Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glyph form: (Help) |
خ | ـخ | ـخـ | خـ |
| Preview | خ | ﺥ | ﺦ | ﺧ | ﺨ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | ARABIC LETTER KHAH | ARABIC LETTER KHAH ISOLATED FORM |
ARABIC LETTER KHAH FINAL FORM |
ARABIC LETTER KHAH INITIAL FORM |
ARABIC LETTER KHAH MEDIAL FORM | |||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1582 | U+062E | 65189 | U+FEA5 | 65190 | U+FEA6 | 65191 | U+FEA7 | 65192 | U+FEA8 |
| UTF-8 | 216 174 | D8 AE | 239 186 165 | EF BA A5 | 239 186 166 | EF BA A6 | 239 186 167 | EF BA A7 | 239 186 168 | EF BA A8 |
| Numeric character reference | خ |
خ |
ﺥ |
ﺥ |
ﺦ |
ﺦ |
ﺧ |
ﺧ |
ﺨ |
ﺨ |
 | This article related to the Arabic script is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |