Ḫāʾ

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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 also one of the ten letters the Persian alphabet added from the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being s̱e, ẕâl, zâd, ẓâ, ġayn, pe, che, že and gaf). It is based on the ḥāʾ  ح. It represents the sound [x] or [χ] in Modern 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.

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), Maha Sarakham (ماها ساراخام).

Ḫāʾ is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Ḫā is not related with the letter X, Ḫā has no derivatives.

• Arabic phonology

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