Che (Persian letter)

Che or cheem (چ‎) is a letter of the Persian alphabet, used to represent [t͡ʃ], and which derives from ǧīm (ج‎) by the addition of two dots.

It is used in Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Azerbaijani, Ottoman Turkish, Malay (Jawi), Javanese (Pegon), and other Indo-Iranian languages.

When representing this sound in transliteration of Persian into Hebrew, it is written as ג׳ gimel and a geresh.

Since the sound is not part of Standard Arabic’s phonology; In most of the rest of Arabic-speaking geographic regions, the combination of tāʾ-šīn (تش‎) is more likely used to transliterate the /t͡ʃ/ sound which is often realized as two consonants ([t]+[ʃ]) as in "تشاد" /tʃaːd/ (Chad) and "التشيك" /at.tʃiːk/ (Czech Republic).

The /ʒ/ pronunciation is also proposed for South Arabian minority languages, like Mehri and Soqotri.

A bilingual road sign at a Turkmen village in Kirkuk Governorate, Iraq. The letter Che is used to represent the sound [ t͡ʃ ] .
In this trilingual road sign in Israel, however, the letter Che is used to represent the sound [ g ] in Nof HaGalil .