German
In German, ch represents two allophones: the voiceless velar fricative when following back vowels or (the so-called "Ach-Laut") and the voiceless palatal fricative in all other positions (the so-called "Ich-Laut"). A similar allophonic variation is assumed to have existed in Old English.
In German, it represents before -s, and an initial Ch (which only appears in loanwords) may also be pronounced in southern varieties, and is always pronounced when a consonant follows the initial Ch.
The Rheinische Dokumenta writing system uses ch, for the voiceless palatal fricative, while ch represents .
Read more about this topic: Ch (digraph)
Famous quotes containing the word german:
“She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The German mind, may it live! Almost invisible as a mind, it finally manifests itself assertively as a conviction.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn’t believe it gets one in the neck.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)