Why is Hanukkah often spelt "Chanukah"?

satguru

Because in Hebrew it begins with a letter chai, which has a sound not written in English, the nearest approximation being ch, as in 'loch'. The h is the anglicised spelling but none are more correct than others as the word is only spelt correctly in Hebrew characters. http://www.holidays.net/chanukah/spelling.htm Dec 10 09, 7:32 PM

Arpeggionist

The Hebrew letter "chet" is pronounced by most eastern Israelis as J in the Spanish "Juan Jose Juarez". Thus in older Latin and German transliterations it is almost always transliterated simply as "H" (one exception is "Rachel") - as in the question's first transliteration. In modern Hebrew, however, most Western speakers lazily pronounce the sound of the letter as "CH" in the German "Bach", hence the latter transliteration in the question. Moreover, the double K in the first transliteration is more linguistically correct, as a transliteration of a hard "dagesh" in the "Kaf". Dec 10 09, 9:35 PM