Kha (Cyrillic)

Kha (хѣръ)
Х х
Usage
Writing systemCyrillic
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originOld Church Slavonic
Sound values[x], [χ]
In UnicodeU+0425, U+0445
History
Development
Χ χ
  • Х х
TransliterationsKh kh, X x
Other
Associated numbers600 (Cyrillic numerals)

Kha, Khe, Xe or Ha 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 how some Scottish speakers pronounce the ch in “loch”, but has different pronunciations in different languages.

Kha is romanised as kh for Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, and Tajik, and as ch for Belarusian and Polish, while being romanised as h for Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Kazakh. It is also romanised as j for Spanish.