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No, it's not. It's a soft 'H' sound in Arabic, the same as in Muhammad. It's closer to the English 'H'. The Scottish 'ch' is a different letter entirely in Arabic and doesn't appear in this name.


This sound, to be precise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative

It is indeed closer in terms of its place of articulation to English 'h' than either variant of the German 'ch' sound.


I suppose the point is that it's not the voiceless glottal fricative?

To my ears [ħ] sounds closer to [x] and [χ] than to [h] (even though the place of articulation is closer to [h]), but I'm sure it's different for people who (natively) speak a language with all three.


Yeah, I imagine it's an interesting question which of these sounds is more perceptually similar to the target sound. It may well depend to some extent on the native language(s) of the person who is listening.




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