How Do You Spell Chanukah / Chanukkah / Hanukah...?

Of all of the Jewish holidays of the year, this holiday has the most heated debate about how to transliterate its name. In fact, it is so debated that the Jewish comedy music group, The LeeVees, even have a song dedicated to said debate:

So, HOW DO YOU SPELL חנוכה?!


According to "proper" transliteration (see this post for disclaimer about "proper" transliteration), the correct way to spell חנוכה is:


Chanukkah.


You may ask, why is it transliterated so? And I'll tell you.
There are 3 syllables at work here (well, really 4, but we'll get there), so I'll go one by one.

• ח - Cha - This is pretty basic, but causes a lot of problems. There really is no English equivalent for this sound. There is an, ironically, Romanized letter, "Ḥ," that implies the more guttural sound. Thus, some people transliterate this syllable as "Ha" (including Jewish websites like My Jewish Learning). In colloquial usage, they are right. For the purpose of proper transliteration, they are not so right.
• נו - nu - Again, seems like it should be basic. But many a times, I have seen people write two n's, and I'm sure you have too. It's just wrong. There's no grammatical reason to have two n's. 
• כה - kkah - Here's where we get to the real fun Hebrew grammar. There are two k's because the dagesh (dot in the middle of the kaf) is called "dagesh chazak," or a "strong dagesh." Without going into all of the nitty-gritty details (tachlis, if you will), this dagesh actually represents two Hebrew syllables even though it makes only one sound (a concept that has taken me a long time to grasp in Hebrew grammar class). This is because at one point in time, there actually were two kaf's. So, it is proper to write two k's. Also, because there is a hei at the end of the word, and it is not a common usage word or name like Moshe that is spelled with an untransliterated hei, the transliteration also ends with an "h."

There you have it: Chanukkah. Of course, as I mentioned before, pretty much any spelling is colloquially accepted. So, 

Happy Chanukkah/Chanuka/Channuka/Channukkahh/Hanukkah/Hannukka/Hanuka!