Velar fricatives

Shaetlan has a consonant that sounds a bit like softly clearing the back of your throat. It is spelled <ch> and is called a voiceless velar fricative /x/. This consonant is a so-called phoneme, which means that it is meaning distinguishing: swapping this sound for another changes the meaning of the word. For example <loch> (pronounced /lɒx/) means 'lake' while <lock> (pronounced /lɒk/) means 'to close (as in a door)', and <pech> (pronounced /pɛx/) means 'to pant' while <peck> means 'to bite with a beak (as in a hen eating)'.

Standard English does not have the voiceless velar fricative in its consonant system, so speakers of Standard English very often use the "hard" k-sound for Shaetlan <ch>-words. But this alters the meaning of the word completely. To speak about "skating on a frozen lock" or "pecking in the heat" doesn't make much sense. The two sounds should be kept apart, which is also why they are spelled differently.

The voiceless velar fricative is common among the languages of the world. German also has it and it is in the name of the famous composer J. S. Bach: it should be pronounced /bax/ with that soft hissing noise at the back of your throat, and not /bak/ with a "hard" k-sound.