2141: "Loansounds" in Hebrew: [tʃ] Oct 25, 2020

Hebrew has no letter to represent [tʃ] (like in CHew) but there are two different traditions to draw from to do this. The way that was used for Yiddish, which did have this sound regularly, was to write טש (T-SH) as is used in קטשופ (ketchup). This word is also notable because it doesn't use the for of פ when it appears at the end of the word, ף, where one would be expected. Because the sound only exists in new loanwords, what Hebrew usually does for other foreign sounds instead is to add a sort of apostrophe (׳) known as a 'geresh' to indicate a variant. In this case, 'crunch' is written as קרונצ׳, as a variant of צ normally for /ts/. This is also used for instance for the [dʒ] sound (as in 'Jump'), written as a variant of ג which usually represents [g].