List of Latin-script tetragraphs

This is a list of tetragraphs in the Latin script. These are most common in Irish orthography. For Cyrillic tetragraphs, see tetragraph#Cyrillic ลง.

Arrernte

Tetragraphs in Arrernte transcribe single consonants, but are largely predictable from their components.

is

is

and are

is

English

The majority of English tetragraphs make vowel sounds:

: is pronounced , as in ''straight.''

: is pronounced in Received Pronunciation (RP), as in ''millionaire.''

: is pronounced in RP, as in ''bizarre.''

: is pronounced in RP, as in ''catarrh.''

: is pronounced , as in ''caught.''

: is pronounced in RP, as in ''prayer.''

: is pronounced in RP, as in ''mayor.''

: has three pronunciations; as in ''weigh,'' as in ''height,'' and as in ''Leigh.''

: has ten possible pronunciations, five of which make vowel sounds; as in ''drought,'' as in ''bought,'' as in ''though,'' as in ''through,'' and as in ''thorough.''

: is pronounced in RP, as in ''myrrh.''

There are four examples of vowel tetragraphs that are found only in proper nouns:

: is pronounced in RP, as found in ''Shakespeare.''

: is pronounced in RP, as found in ''Worcestershire.''

: is pronounced in RP, as found in ''Moore.''

: is pronounced , as found in ''Hughes.''

Three consonant tetragraphs exist in English that are more commonly sounded as two separate digraphs. However, when used in word-initial position they become one single sound:

: is pronounced as in ''chthonian.'' Pronounced as two digraphs in ''autochthonous.''

: is pronounced as in ''phthisis.'' Pronounced as two digraphs (or by some) in ''diphthong.''

: is pronounced as in ''shcherbakovite,'' a mineral named after Russian geochemist and mineralogist, Dmitri Ivanovich Shcherbakov. It is used as the transcription of the Cyrillic letter Щ and usually read as two separate digraphs, as in ''pushchairs'' or as in Pechishche, a place name in Belarus.

French

is used to write the sound in a few words such as ''myrtillier'' .

In addition, trigraphs are sometimes followed by silent letters, and these sequences may be confused with tetragraphs:

is found for in words such as "grecque" and "Mecque", where the trigraph ''cqu'' is followed by the feminine suffix ''e''.

is found for when the silent plural suffix ''x'' is added to the trigraph ''eau''.

German

represents in loanwords such as '' Dschungel'' ("jungle"), '' Aserbaidschan'' ("Azerbaijan"), ''Tadschikistan'' ("Tajikistan"), '' Kambodscha'' ("Cambodia") and '' Dschingis Khan'' ("Genghis Khan").

represents , which is a relatively uncommon phoneme in German but appears in some very common words like ''deutsch'' ("German"), ''Deutschland'' ("Germany"), ''Tschechien'' ("Czech Republic"), and ''tschüss'' ("bye").

is used for in a few German names such as Zschopau and Zschorlau.

Hmong

There are several sequences of four letters in the Romanized Popular Alphabet that transcribe what may be single consonants, depending on the analysis. However, their pronunciations are predictable from their components. All begin with the of prenasalization, and end with the of aspiration. Between these is a digraph, one of , , , or , which may itself be predictable.

is .

is .

is .

is .

Irish

''Used between two velarized ("broad") consonants:''

: and are used for (in Donegal, ).
:, , , , are used for (in Donegal, ).
: is used for .

''Used between two palatalized ("slender") consonants:''

: and are used for .

''Used between a broad and a slender consonant:''

: and are used for (in Donegal, ).
: and are used for .

''Used between a slender and a broad consonant:''

: and are used for (in Donegal, ).
: is used for (in Donegal, ) between a slender and a broad consonant, or for an unstressed at the end of a word.

Juǀʼhoan

The apostrophe was used with three trigraphs for click consonants in the 1987 orthography of Juǀʼhoan. The apostrophe is a diacritic rather than a letter in Juǀʼhoan.

for

for

for

for

Piedmontese

Piedmontese does not have tetragraphs. A hyphen may separate from or , when these would otherwise be read as single sounds.

and , to avoid confusion with the digraph for .

and are similarly used for the sequence .

Others

and are used in Dutch for the sounds and , as in '' sneeuw,'' "snow" and '' nieuw,'' "new". alone stands for , so these sequences are not predictable.

is used in the practical orthography of the Taa language, where it represents the prevoiced affricate .

is used for in Swahili-based alphabets. However, the apostrophe is a diacritic in Swahili, not a letter, so this is not a true tetragraph.

is used in Yanyuwa to write a pre- velar nasal, .

is used in the Puter orthographic variety of the Romansh language (spoken in the Upper Engadin area in Switzerland) for the sequence (while the similar trigraph denotes the sounds and ). It is not part of the orthography of Rumantsch Grischun, but is used in place names like S-chanf and in the Puter orthography used locally in schools again since 2011.

is used in Xhosa to write the sound . It is often replaced with the ambiguous trigraph .

is used in various Northern Athabaskan languages for , the dental ejective affricate.

References

{{Latin script

Latin-script tetragraphs