H occurs as a single-letter grapheme (with value /h/ or silent) and in various digraphs, such as ch (/tʃ/, French /ʃ/, Greek and Italian /k/, German & Scots /x/), gh (silent, /g/, or /f/) , ph (Greek words with /f/), rh (Greek words with /r/), sh (/ʃ/), th (either /θ/ like thin or /ð/ like then), wh (either /w/, /ʍ/or /f/: see wine-whine merger). In transcriptions of other writing systems, zh may occur (as in Russian Doctor Zhivago); this is generally pronounced /ʒ/ in English, although this rendition is not necessarily faithful to the sound in the original language (as in the case of pinyin transcriptions).