Numeric value: 90 | ||
Che or Cha (Ч ч; italics: Ч ч) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
Contents
It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/, like ⟨tch⟩ in "switch".
In English, it is romanized most often as ⟨ch⟩ but sometimes as ⟨tch⟩, like in French. In German, it can be transcribed as ⟨tsch⟩. In linguistics, it is transcribed as ⟨č⟩ so "Tchaikovsky" (Чайковский in Russian) may be transcribed as Chaykovsky or Čajkovskij.
History
The name of Che in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was чрьвь (črĭvĭ), meaning "worm".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Che had a value of 90.
Slavic languages
In all Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, except Russian and Ukrainian, Che represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/.
In Russian and Ukrainian, Che usually represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate /t͡ɕ/. However, in a few words, it is pronounced as /tʃ/, like in Russian: лучше and Ukrainian: знаючий.
In Russian, in a few words, it represents /ʂ/ (like English ⟨sh⟩ /ʃ/ in "shape"): Russian: что, чтобы, нарочно.
Zhuang
The letter Che was used in the Latin Zhuang alphabet from 1957 to 1986 to represent the fourth (falling) tone from its similarity to the numeral 4. In 1986, it was replaced by the Latin letter X.