Why is Hanakkah sometimes spelled Chanakah? (and vice versa?)?

Answer 1

"Hanukkah" has become the main modern spelling, and with good reason, as you'll see. But there are good historical reasons explaining the other (and which you can understand better from other examples).

Though there are two main spellings -- Chanukah and Hanukkah --the word has been rendered in English several different ways. The main issues are:

a) how to render the first Hebrew letter -- "chet" -- a sound that does not exist in modern English

b) whether to indicate the "doubling" of the "K" (Hebrew "kaf") -- Hebrew texts that include vowel and other markings indicate that the sound is to be treated as doubled. But they did this sort of thing by adding a dot in the letter. So, if you ignore such markings, you might only use ONE K.

c) final h (Hebrew letter name is "he", pronounce "hay") in Hebrew words is silent. In "pre-biblical Hebrew" it apparently indicated an ending like "-hu") but this final vowel was dropped. The H


The MAIN issue is, of course, how to BEGIN the word. A few notes.

"CH" - when Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenicians they came up with various ways for handling some of the sounds of their own (Greek) language that were different from the Phoenicians (note that Phoenician and Hebrew are closely related languages and used the same alphabet). One device was to add an "H" to a letter to indicate a sound related to, but a little different from the letter by itself. This trick -- of creating a "digraph", that isg two letters to indicate one sound -- is the origin of "ph", "sh", "th" and "ch" (and even "gh" when English used to pronounce it).

The practice was picked up by the Romans (Latin), esp. when borrowing Greek words, though ironically the Greeks later invented brand new letters for such sounds ("phi", "theta", "chi"). (This is why, for example, "ph" used for the /f/ sound usually indicates that a word originally came from Greek.)

Note that the sound indicated by "ch" in Latin, and in languages that borrowed the Latin alphabet, was different from what MODERN English does with "ch" (as in "church"). But in MOST languages the "ch" still indicates a sound related to what the Greeks used it for, and a Semitic (Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc) sound related to that. We see it in German "Achtung" and Scottish "loch" (meaning "lake"). It is ALSO reflected in words English borrowed from Greek in which we simply pronounce the "ch" as if it were a K (or "hard C"), such as "Christ, Christmas, psychology, etc".

Do note that the ch used in German, Scottish, etc. IS a relative of the English "K" sound, the main difference being that the tongue is relaxed a little to let air through, instead of stopping it completely as K does.

Anyway --based on the practice, the Hebrew words was rendered into English (also German, etc) with this digraph "CH" in much the same way as we still use it in "Christ". (It was NEVER pronounced like the ch's in "church".) This is the OLDER practice.

But either because it caused some confusion (people using the WRONG "ch" sound), or because the sound ACTUALLY used to pronounce the word by English-speakers ended up sounding more like the one we make with the letter "H", the spelling with an H began to be used. Actually, many Hebrew words (esp. names) borrowed into English and other languages had adopted an H-sound and spelling for what was originally a "chet" centuries ago (examples, the first "H" in Hannah, Johann, and the final H in Noah). So using an H to indicate how we actually DO pronounce it in English is nothing new.

Since the English version of the word IS now pronounced with an "H" sound --not the "K" sound of the CH in "Christ", etc., nor the original 'harsh' CH sound (loch, achtung...)-- I would recommend using this more modern spelling. But don't be surprised to see "Chanukah", and unless you are learning Hebrew, don't try to pronounce it any differently.

Answer 2

Well, my attempt to answer this is that it's because it comes from the hebrew language which might not follow the same rules as the english language. Therefore can be spelt either way. For example the Ch could make a different sound in hebrew giving it that harsh H sound, where as in english it's pronounced that way anyway so there's no need for the Ch but we keep it as a seperate spelling anyway.

Answer 3

Actually, it's spelled either Hanukkah, or Chanukah. The reason for the two spellings is in how/who is doing the translation from Hebrew to English.

Answer 4

There are maaany ways that it's spelled. This is because there's not a direct way to depict the sound/spelling of the Hebrew word/letters, so people spell it in different ways.

Answer 5

There are many American families who are half Christian/half Jewish. If you are fully Jewish, then you celebrate Hanukkah. If you are half/half, then you most likely celebrate Chanukkah. This is a mix between Christmas and Hanukkah. Happy Holidays!!!

Answer 6

fist off it's Hannukah or Chanukah....second, I don't know the reason