How to spell kwanzaa

Hanukkah? Chanukah?

Hanukkah vs chanukah pronunciation

Hanukah?

How do you spell the name of the candle-lighting holiday that falls each year around the onset of winter? Like so many questions in Judaism, this one has no right answer.

The main complication is the first letter, which corresponds to the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet: chet (or het, or heth, or cheth; there’s no right spelling there either).

There is no English equivalent of the chet sound, which is rendered in transliteration variously with a h, ch or kh. Those looking to emphasize the guttural sound of the chet will often use ch, while those looking for the closest English equivalent letter tend towards the h, also the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Another variation stems from the final letter.

In Hebrew, that letter is hay, and in the Hebrew pronunciation it’s essentially silent. Many will add an “h” at the end to indicate the presence of the hay, but it doesn’t add much phonetically, so others may skip it.