I don't think it would so much be a case of mistaking a ח for a כ as using the closest phonetic equivalent of ﺥ rather than the closest cognate.
It's like the way in modern Hebrew, transcriptions of Arabic are spelled phonetically, e.g. سلام (salaam), despite having a sīn, being spelled סלאם (a phenomenon which drives me, as a linguistic purist, nuts, but there's nothing I can do; and I suppose it's no worse than the anglicisation of (older) borrowings from French into English).
Why should the س of salaam come over to Hebrew as a ס? If you want to be a purist of cognate phonemes and their associated letters, surely, the only way to spell סלאם is שלום! Historically, ס was the neutral [s] sound in Hebrew. Sin was unusual, and a letter not represented in Arabic phonology. If you disagree with my first proposition to spell the word שלום, samekh is the right letter to equate to Arabic س. (Note too that an orthographic cognate is distinct from a phonemic cognate. Even if ש and س have a common history, there is no relationship between the dots they may carry.)
To further Michael's suggestion about ח and כ, the arabic letter here (ﺥ) is a velar fricative ([x]), which in Tiberian/Modern Hebrew is the same sound as a kaf without a dagesh. Once upon a time, the written letter ח carried both this sound and the sound of a pharyngeal fricative.
Presumably, the originators of the alphabet had lost this distinction. Hebrew carried it on but eventually lost it. Arabic also used one letter for these two sounds when adopting the alphabet, but added a dot above the letter to indicate the velar letter, and left it without for the pharyngeal. In Judeo-Arabic, letters like this with dots on the top are indicated with the same dots above the Hebrew letters, or with apostrophe-like strokes after the letter as you indicated was depicted in your books.
Interestingly, as with ayin, we can identify that at least someone at the time that the Septuagint was compiled was still differentiating the pronunciation of ח and ח', although they were being written identically. To take an arbitrary sample of the former, where the ח becomes a vowel in the Greek:
נחמיה - Νεεμιας
נוח - Νωε
רחב - Ρααβ
מנחם - Μαναημ
חזקיהו - Εζεκιας
פקח - Φακεαι
פנחס - Φινεες
יחזקאל - Ιεζεκιηλ
And with the latter, the ח becomes Chi (χ):
חם - Χαμ
נחור - Ναχωρ
אחאב - Αχααβ
May תאריך or ארך be cognate to Persin روز (ruz) meaning day.
Regarding the connection of taarich (date) to yereach (moon); Perhaps one could add to these, zerach (shine), and mizrach (east): yielding the idea that the moon first rises and beams forth its rays from the east, at its appointed taarich. This idea could also accomodate the connection to the mention of the Persian word "ruz" (day). On a mystical level, ruz cognates to raz (secret=207), having the gammatria of or (light=207; Who knows? perhaps there is even a bit of wise enlightenment hidden in between the resh and zayin of the word raz). Thus, zerach can also allude to the Sun's rays which are also first seen in the East. Regressing to mizrach; this word is also famous for forming the phrase: "mi-tzad zeh ruach chaim."
My first thought on seeing the spelling תאריח was that it would be pronounced "ta'arayich". I can't think of any word ending in יח that isn't pronounced as "iyach" as in שיח, "eyach" as in ריח, or "uach" as in רוח. Perhaps that's the reason?
I think Sybil's suggestion is indeed the correct answer. To put it differently, in Hebrew a word never ends with consonantal chet (or, for that matter, hei or ayin) unless it's preceded by a kamatz or patach vowel. So the spelling תאריח would end up being pronounced "taariach"; changing the chet to a chaf avoids this.
Yes, Sybil and Alex, that probably was a factor in it, too.
I spoke to my brother, and he suggested that the coined word תאריך used a kaf instead of a chet, because the Arabic letter ﺥ was closer to a kaf than a chet (as Joel also mentioned). He found another word transliterated from Arabic to Hebrew with a similar switch: muchtar. The Arabic would be spelled in Hebrew as מוח'תר, but Hebrew word is מוכתר.
I'm not sure about the suggestions that there was a concern that the word would have been pronounced taariach. Had that been the accepted spelling, the pronunciation would have seemed normal to us now.
Oh, and one more example of that transliteration pattern - this one from English, not Hebrew. The Arabic word ח'רב became "carob", but חרם became "harem".
Isn't also true that Ben Yehudah intended for a Mizrachi style of Hebrew?
In Arabic texts written by Jews in the Middle Ages, the velar خ is written as כ with a rapha sign (usually a dot). For example the number five is written כמסה even though the etymological equivalent in Hebrew is חמשה.
Incidentally, the Hebrew version of Ben Sira from the Geniza contains the sentence וגם רח יאריח עתות. Professor Menahem Qister has suggested that the verb יאריח is connected to Arabic أرخ
Thanks for the confirmation of that theory. I imagine it would explain muchtar as well, correct?
What does וגם רח יאריח עתות mean in Ben Sira there?
Moshe: I'm pretty sure I've seen it as ח' rather than כ'...
That is not the practice in Mediaeval Judeo Arabic.
The spelling 'ח for خ is sometimes used in modern Hebrew teaching materials to accentuate the etymological connection between the two historical morphemes and to keep the Hebrew transliteration in line with the Arabic orthographic system.
This post is a good example of cases where the Hebrew and Arab alphabets don't match up.
Hebrew as letters kaf which can become khaf without a dagesh. The Arabic equivalents are kaaf and khaa, respectively. However in Arabic these are separate letters and are indicated even in unvocalized texts. There's no dagesh/no dagesh switcheroo thing in Arabic.
I'm going through some pamphlets from the Hebrew Language Academy, and I found one that says that David Yellin was the first one to use that word to mean date, in a letter to Hamelitz.
It apparently was discussed in Lashonenu L'Am #300, 1979. I don't have a copy, but if I come across one, perhaps I'll update the post.
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