Chi (letter) Chi (letter) Chi (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ; ) is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet, pronounced or in English. Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop (in the Western Greek alphabet: /ks/). In Koine Greek and later dialects it became a fricative (/) along with Θ and Φ. In Modern Greek, it has two distinct pronunciations: In front of high or front vowels ( or ) it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative , as in German "ich" or like the "h" in some pronunciations of the English words "hew" and "human". In front of
Letter (alphabet) letters have prescribed orders, although this too may vary by language. In Spanish, for instance, "ñ" is a separate letter, sorted after "n". In English, "n" and "ñ" are classified alike. As symbols that indicate segmental speech, letters are associated with phonetics. In a purely phonemic alphabet, a single phoneme is denoted by a single letter, although in history and in practice letters often indicate more than one phoneme. There are more sounds, or phonemes, in English–about 44–than there are letters of the alphabet. A letter may therefore be associated with more than one phoneme, with the phoneme determined by