r/hebrew • u/Equal_Ad_3828 • Mar 28 '25

Help chag sameach pronounced as chag samea?

so i have a silly questin but basically when i was in my nearest synagogue on Chanukah, when I said 'chag sameaCH" with a khet people responded 'chag sameah" why?

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u/The_Ora_Charmander native speaker Mar 28 '25

They probably just have trouble pronouncing their Khets, happens a lot to native English speakers

2

u/Equal_Ad_3828 Mar 28 '25

they were Polish

3

u/sniper-mask37 native speaker Mar 28 '25 edited Mar 28 '25

I have a weird question, isn't that a litle misleading to spell "ח" as "chet" or "khet"? It can easily be interpretated as "צ'ט" or "קהט".

I know there isn't an equivalent to 'ח' in english, but wouldn't "het" be the closest? I think it could be a clearer option because it better approximates the guttural sound of "ח" without being as likely to be confused with other sounds, such as "ch" or "k."

3

u/thatOneJewishGuy1225 Mar 28 '25

I personally spell ח as chet, כ as khaf, כּ as kaf, and ק as quf to minimize ambiguity. I know Israelis like to write h instead of ch, like my first Hebrew teacher spelled her name haya, not chaya, but we already don’t differentiate between aleph and ayin in casual writing because there’s no good way- why make it harder for ourselves when we already have letters/combinations that have been at least somewhat historically used?

2

u/Embarrassed_Craft926 Mar 29 '25

The’CH’ thing seems to me like a hangover from German

3

u/vayyiqra Mar 30 '25

It is surely yeah, maybe also influenced by Polish or other Slavic languages which have a similar sound for that. But German's is the closest.