Usage of kh in transliteration of Cyrillic, hebrew and others

Question

I'm not a native english speaker and I'm sometimes baffled by the appearance of "kh" in Russian names and other words (for instance the russian lunar rover "Lunokhod"). In this case, the sensible transliteration would be "h", as it is in the original Cyrillic and in most transliteration for other languages (this is why this English transliteration looks very alien and hard to read compared to slavic languages with latin script, even though the pronunciation is almost the same).

In this case, the pronunciation is very close to the hard "h", as in "hospital", "Hungary", and to "ch" in "loch".

I assume "h" was not used because people may choose to interpret it as a silent letter. Am I correct about this?

"ch" is also problematic, because in some other words ("technology") it's pronounced as "k" (again in contrast to most other languages that have a version of this widespread Greek-based word that is pronounced with "h", as is the greek letter χ).

"kh" seems like the least suitable choice, as it explicitly suggests "k", as in "Khan (Wrath of Khan)". Trying to pronounce it phonetically results in Klingon-sounding sputtering noise.

So, what is the reasoning for this weird combination of consonants and what are the arguments against other reasonable choices that are already used in other English words that have the same phoneme?

Answer 1

"Kh" means Х & is used to indicate /x/, a rougher sound than /h/, although Russian is undergoing a sound shift & /x/ is lowering from [x] to [x̞], which is less rough & sounds more like [h].

What I find silly is how Й is commonly transliterated as "Y". Y is already used for Ы. It should be "J", which is what is used for Polish. Й occupies the same alphabet position as J. "Ygyatta" is not "Ыгятта".

Answer 2

My intuitive understanding for transliteration of /x/ as kh has been simply that /k/ like /x/ is velar, while /h/ is glottal. So prepending 'k' to an 'h' suggests that the sound should be fricative like 'h', but with a velar articulation.

Answer 3

The English convention of using the digraph kh to represent the non-English sound /x/ seems to have originated with the Central Asian title khan, attested in English since around 1400 in spellings like caan, chaan, caun etc., then in Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (1788) as khan. The latter spelling eventually prevailed (perhaps because of Gibbon’s prestige) and "kh" was subsequently adopted to represent the same sound in Russian, and other languages.

Answer 4

It becomes a matter of whether one wants the transliteration to be loyal to the Cyrillic, or easily interpreted by English speakers.

a) Russian has many of the same Cyrillic characters as Serbian. Since Serbian has a Cyrillic and Latin alphabet, this could be used as a base. For additional letters, I'd make comparisons with other languages, or simply use what scientific transliterators have decided on.

b) Academics have tried to transliterate Cyrillic languages in such a way that they are easily intelligible to English speakers, using only the basic 26 Latin characters. Their attempts at doing so have become the standard employed by Western governments. One shortfall is the fact that they use y to represent three distinct Russian characters (Й, Ы, and Ь), the last of which is not even a letter but a sign that "indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant."

• Their transliteration of Ж as zh also leaves something to be desired. The pronunciation of zh is not unambiguous to an English speaker. I'd go as far as making it look French, e.g. ge, to avoid that.
• Lastly, the transliteration of Х as kh, mentioned in your question, is plain tacky. It should be h, the closest English equivalent. In a strict transliteration, one could make the argument for ch—how the voiceless velar fricative is spelt in the majority of Latin-based languages that use it—or j/x, as in Spanish.

I've used Russian as an example here, but the same principles could be employed for other Cyrillic languages, sure.

Answer 5

The kh indicates a paletized H. The H in hospital is pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the lower front teeth. KH is pronounced with the it almost touching the hard palate (the ridge of bone inside the row of upper front teeth). This produces a vibration similiar to that of a Scotish rolled R.

KH is an attempt to convey a letter sound which most English speakers cannot pronounce anyway. It is a product of pedantic transliteration such as is done on passports and in library card catelogues. Such transliteration often produces unusual letter combinations which confuse Americans or cause them to view the word as completely unpronouncable. Sure H is not quite the same as KH, but if you write H, readers will pronounce it close to correctly. If you write KH they may not be able to pronounce the word at all.

Incidently, there have been and still are numerous standards for transliterating Russian Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. One widely used in US is from the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf This standard gives KH as the transliteration of Х. This standard is widely used in the US even outside of libraries.

The ICAO standard for machine readable travel documents gives KH as the transliteration for Х in Russian names: http://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p1_v1_cons_en.pdf

But, the KH transliteration is not universal. For example, the standard for transliterating telegrams leaving Russia give H as the transliteration:

http://www.moscow.cnt.ru/documents/Instrukcia%20mezhdunarodnye%20telegrammy.pdf