Gh is a digraph found in many languages.

In Latin-based orthographies

Indo-European languages

Germanic languages

English

In English, historically represented (the

voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''lo ...

, as in the

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

word ), and still does in ''lough'' and certain other

Hiberno-English Hiberno-English or Irish English (IrE), also formerly sometimes called Anglo-Irish, is the set of dialects of English native to the island of Ireland. In both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, English is the first language in e ...

words, especially

proper noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity ('' Africa''; ''Jupiter''; '' Sarah''; ''Walmart'') as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...

s. In the dominant dialects of modern English, is almost always either silent or pronounced (see Ough). It is thought that before disappearing, the sound became partially or completely voiced to or , which would explain the new spelling —

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

used a simple — and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.

Alexander John Ellis Alexander John Ellis (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890) was an English mathematician, philologist and early phonetician who also influenced the field of musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden nam ...

reported it being pronounced as on the

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

border and close to the Scottish border in the late nineteenth century. It is also occasionally pronounced , such as in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

as well as in Keighley. When gh occurs at the beginning of a word in English, it is pronounced as in "ghost", "ghastly", "ghoul", "ghetto", "ghee" etc. In this context, it does not derive from a former . American Literary Braille has a dedicated cell pattern for the digraph (dots 126, ⠣).

Middle Dutch

Middle Dutch Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or , there was no overarching sta ...

, was often used to represent (the

voiced velar fricative The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents ...

) before , , and . This usage survives in place names such as

Ghent Ghent ( ; ; historically known as ''Gaunt'' in English) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the Provinces of Belgium, province ...

. The spelling of English word ''ghost'' with a (from

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

) was likely influenced by the Middle Dutch spelling (

Modern Dutch Modern Dutch ( ) is the term for variety of Dutch spoken and written since around the 1500s, this is to distinguish it from the previous phases of the languages, Middle Dutch and Old Dutch. The term Early Modern Dutch has been applied to the Dut ...

Latin languages

In Italian and Romanian, represents (the

voiced velar plosive The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages. Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulat ...

) before and . In Galician, it is often used to represent the pronunciation of

gheada Gheada () is a term in Galician to describe the debuccalisation of the voiced velar stop to a, usually voiceless, back fricative, most often a voiceless pharyngeal fricative . Although it is found throughout Galicia, its use is declining in Lu ...

Irish

In Irish, represents (the

) and (the voiced palatal approximant). Word-initially it represents the

lenition In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language ...

of , for example 'my jaw' (compare 'jaw').

Igbo

In Igbo, the digraph is used in words like agha (war).

Juǀʼhoan

In Juǀʼhoan, it's used for the

prevoiced Prevoicing, in phonetics, is voicing before the onset of a consonant or beginning with the onset of the consonant but ending before its release. In the extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology, prevoicing is transcri ...

aspirated velar plosive .

Malay

In the Malay and Indonesian alphabet, is used to represent the

() in Arabic origin words.

Maltese

The

Maltese language Maltese (, also or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language derived from Siculo-Arabic, late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance languages, Romance Stratum (linguistics), superstrata. It is the only Semitic languages, Semitic language pred ...

has a related digraph, . It is considered a single letter, called ''għajn'' (the same word for

eye An eye is a sensory organ that allows an organism to perceive visual information. It detects light and converts it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons (neurones). It is part of an organism's visual system. In higher organisms, the ey ...

and spring, named for the corresponding Arabic letter ʿayn). It is usually silent, but it is necessary to be included because it changes the pronunciation of neighbouring letters, usually lengthening the succeeding vowels. At the end of a word, when not substituted by an apostrophe, it is pronounced . Its function is thus not unlike modern English ''gh'', except that the English version comes after vowels rather than before like Maltese ''għ'' (''għajn'' would come out something like ''ighn'' if spelled as in English).

Swahili

In the Roman Swahili alphabet, is used to represent the

() in Arabic origin words.

Tlingit

In Canadian Tlingit represents , which in Alaska is written .

Taiwanese

In Daighi tongiong pingim, represents (the

voiced velar stop The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypic ...

) before , , , , and .

Uyghur

In Uyghur Latin script, gh represents .

Vietnamese

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...

, represents before , , .

In romanization

In the

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

of various languages, usually represents the

(). Like , may also be pharyngealized, as in several Caucasian and

Native American languages The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-Columbian era, before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while m ...

. In transcriptions of

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

such as

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

and

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

, as well as their ancestor,

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

, represents a voiced velar aspirated plosive (often referred to as a breathy or murmured voiced velar plosive). The Ukrainian National transliteration system uses to avoid occurrence of another digraph, usually which is used for another type of phoneme. Such as the word "pack" (a group of animals) in Ukrainian would be Romanized as zghraia () rather than zhraia, which could be misconstrued to intend . The Ukrainian transliteration standard DSTU 9112:2021 (based on ISO 9:1995) uses to represent common Ukrainian letter г (the

voiced glottal fricative The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phonet ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gh (Digraph) Latin-script digraphs