Why is Hanukkah spelled so many ways?

Answer 1

Because people misspell it. The real spelling is "Hanukkah".

Answer:

It is a Hebrew word and there is no standard way to spell Hebrew words in English. The Hebrew alphabet is not the same as the English alphabet. When you are attempting to transliterate a word, there will be variations in spelling. (When I was younger, Beijing was spelled Peking. The name hasn't changed but the official transliterated spelling has.)

Answer 2

Hanukkah is just a Romanization of the Hebrew word חנוכה‎. There are many ways to spell it, the most unique one being Khanaka.

(see the related question for more than a dozen examples)

Answer 3

The most common spellings are Hanukkah and Chanukah.

There are other spellings, including Hanukka, Hanukkah, and Chanuka,

which all derive from the Romanization of the original Hebrew word (חנוכה).

A list of other spellings includes :

Hanukah

Hannukah

Chanuka

Chanukkah

Hanuka

Channukah

Chanukka

Hannuka

Hannukkah

Channuka

Xanuka

Hannukka

Channukkah

Channukka

Chanuqa

and rarely Khanaka.

(see related question and link)

Answer 4

There are more than a dozen spellings used, because all use phonetic spelling, a Romanization of the Hebrew word for the holy day (חנוכה).

The most common are Hanukkah and Chanukah.

(see the related questions)

Answer 5

As you can also see in the French spellings for words in Vietnamese (from its days as French Indochina), the English spellings of Hanukkah are Romanizations of the original sound of the name (חנוכה) in Hebrew. The same applies to many words translated from Arabic.

There is no English spelling that yields the exact Hebrew (ch and k) pronunciations, but close approximations are Hanukkah and Chanukah.

(see related question)

Answer 6

In Hebrew there is only one way to spell it: חנוכה

But in English there are many ways. However, the only 2 ways recognized by the Associated Press Style Guide are: Chanukah and Hanukkah.

Answer 7

In English, there are only 2 standard ways: Chanukah and Hanukkah.

Any other way is considered a variation.

Answer 8

Although there are many ways to write the word 'Channukah' in English as this is a transliteration of a word from a different language, there is only one correct pronunciation of the word.

Answer 9

16 + some Randoms