Modern Greek phonetic symbol for X (possibly off topic)
Trevor Peterson
06PETERSON at cua.edu
Fri Jun 28 06:53:19 EDT 2002
>===== Original Message From James Forsyth <james at bigbeing.com.au> =====
>I would be very appreciative if anyone could suggest a phonetic symbol for
>X, (in case I've got my transliteration wrong) as in: EN AR_X_H HN O
>LOGOS). For everything else I am using the Oxford dictionary Key to
>Phonetic Symbols, but this sound isn't represented by the English language.
Well, the usual transliteration is ch, which runs the risk of suggesting to an
English speaker that it should be pronounced as in chair, but is often
associated with the German ch sound. On this list, we tend to use C, since it
allows us to represent the letter with one symbol only. (And a hard c is about
as close as we get in English to chi.) Another option might be to use kh, as
in Mikhail, which probably wouldn't run any risk of being mistaken for a
different sound in English, although it still wouldn't necessarily be readily
obvious to most readers what they should do with it. (If they stop and try to
work it out, they'll probably get pretty close by saying k and h together.)
Depending on exactly the pronunciation you're going for, there is a fairly
standard convention used in Semitic transcription of h with a rocker
underneath (like an upside-down circumflex). I happen to use essentially the
same pronunciation for both, although I notice that some people move the sound
further forward onto the hard palate, like German ch after i (as opposed to
the sound it has after a).
I'm sure a real linguist would have more ideas, but that's what comes to my
mind.
Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics
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