Che, Cha or Chu (Ч ч; italics:
''Ч ч'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
.
It commonly represents the
voiceless postalveolar affricate
The voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with , (formerly ...
, like in "switch" or in "choice".
In English, it is
romanized most often as but sometimes as , like in French. In German, it can be transcribed as . In linguistics, it is transcribed as so "
Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
" (Чайковский in Russian) may be transcribed as ''Chaykovskiy'' or ''Čajkovskij''.
History
The name of Che in the
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
was (''črĭvĭ''), meaning "worm".
In the
Cyrillic numeral system
Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used ...
, Che had a value of 90.
Usage
Slavic languages
In all Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, except Russian, Che represents the
voiceless postalveolar affricate
The voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with , (formerly ...
.
In Russian, Che usually represents the
voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are , , and , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are t_s ...
, like the
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
pronunciation of j in
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...
. However, in a few words, it is pronounced as , like in russian: лучше.
In Russian, in a few words, it represents (like English in "shape"): russian: что, чтобы, нарочно.
In China
The 1955 version of
Hanyu pinyin contained the Che for the sound
ɕ(for which later the letter ''j'' was used),
["其中ч是取自俄文字母" https://www.douban.com/note/603048605/] apparently because of its similarity to the
Bopomofo letterㄐ.
The Latin
Zhuang alphabet
Standard Zhuang (autonym: , , (pre-1982: ; Sawndip: ); ) is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangq ...
used a modified
Hindu-Arabic numeral 4, strongly resembling Che, from 1957 to 1986 to represent the fourth (falling)
tone. In 1986, it was replaced by the Latin letter
X.
Related letters and other similar characters
*4 :
4 - Number that very closely resembles Che, especially in digital or open ended form
*C c :
Latin letter C - the same sound in Malay, Indonesian, Italian
*Č č :
Latin letter C with caron
*Ç ç :
Latin letter C with cedilla - an Albanian. Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Turkish, and Turkmen letter
*Ĉ ĉ :
Latin letter C with circumflex, used in
Esperanto language
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communica ...
*Ch :
Digraph Ch
*Cs :
Digraph Cs
*Cz :
Digraph Cz
*Ҷ ҷ :
Cyrillic letter Che with descender
*Ӵ ӵ :
Cyrillic letter Che with diaeresis
*Ҹ ҹ :
Cyrillic letter Che with vertical stroke
*Ꚇ ꚇ :
Cyrillic letter Cche
*Ɥ ɥ :
Latin letter turned H
*Վ վ :
Armenian letter Vev
*Կ կ :
Armenian letter Ken
Computing codes
References
Explanatory footnotes
In some varieties of Western Cyrillic,
Ҁ was used for 90, and Ч was used for 60 instead of
Ѯ.
Citations
External links
*
*{{Wiktionary-inline, ч