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A trigraph (from the el, τρεῖς, ''treîs'', "three" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a group of three characters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined.


Latin-script trigraphs

For example, in the word '' schilling'', the trigraph ''sch'' represents the
voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless ...
, rather than the
consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education f ...
. In the word ''beautiful,'' the sequence ''eau'' is pronounced , and in the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
word ''château'' it is pronounced . It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a sequence of letters in English is a trigraph, because of the complicating role of
silent letter In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign . Null is an unpronou ...
s. There are however a few productive trigraphs in English such as ''tch'' as in ''watch,'' and ''igh'' as in ''high.'' The trigraph ''sch'' in German is equivalent to the English ''sh'' and pronounced . In Dutch, which is closely related to German, this same trigraph is pronounced . In Italian, however, ''sch'' represents the sounds before ''e'' or ''i'', as in ''bruschetta'' . In neither language is this trigraph regarded as an independent letter of the alphabet. In Hungarian, the trigraph '' dzs'' is treated as a distinct letter, with its own place in the alphabet, and it is pronounced like the English ''j'' . The combination ''gli'' in Italian can also be a trigraph, representing the
palatal lateral approximant The voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter (not to be confused with lowerca ...
before vowels other than ''i'', as in ''
aglio Aglio (Italian for "garlic") is a surname. People with this surname include: * Andrea-Salvatore Aglio (1736–1786), Italian painter and sculptor * Agostino Aglio (1777–1857), Italian painter * Domenico Aglio (active 1710), Italian sculptor Se ...
'', pronounced .


Trigraphs in non-Latin scripts

Although trigraphs are not uncommon in
Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter ...
s, they are rare elsewhere. There are several in
Cyrillic alphabets Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the b ...
, which for example uses five trigraphs and a tetragraph in the Kabardian alphabet: ''гъу'' , ''кӏу'' , ''къу'' , ''кхъ'' , and ''хъу'' , and also a tetragraph ''кхъу'' . While most of these can be thought of as consonant + , the letters in ''кхъ'' cannot be so separated: the ''х'' has the negative meaning that ''кхъ'' is not ejective, as ''къ'' is . (See List of Cyrillic digraphs.) Tsakonian has ''τσχ'' . The
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...
used for the
Yiddish language Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
by YIVO uses the Hebrew script trigraph דזש ('' dalet,
zayin Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew Zayin , Yiddish Zoyen , Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn or Zāy . It represents the sound . The ...
, shin'') to refer to .
Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The ...
has a few vowel trigraphs, ㅙ and ㅞ (from ''oai'' and ''uei''), which are not entirely predictable. However, as ㅐ and ㅔ are considered as single letters in modern Korean, ㅙ and ㅞ are considered as digraphs now. There is also a single obsolete consonant trigraph, ㅹ, a theoretical form not actually found in any texts. It is composed of digraph ㅃ and a circle-shaped single letter ㅇ, which means the letter "to lighten" sounds, linguistically to change stop consonants to the fricative consonants in cases of bilabial consonants (for ᄛ, ㅇ changes
alveolar tap Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit. Uses in anatomy and zoology * Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs ** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte ** Alveolar duct ** Alveolar macrophage * M ...
to
alveolar lateral approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...
or retroflex lateral approximant). Because these letters are created to transcribe consonants of Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca), these are disappeared soon. In modern days, ㅃ is used for different sound, ʰ Japanese
kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
use trigraphs for ''(C)yō'' sequences, as in きょう ''kyou'' ("today"); the う is only pronounced after another . In
Inuktitut syllabics Inuktitut syllabics ( iu, ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ, qaniujaaqpait, or , ) is an abugida-type writing system used in Canada by the Inuktitut-speaking Inuit of the territory of Nunavut and the Nunavik and Nunatsiavut regions of Quebec and Labrad ...
, the digraph ᖕ ''ng'' cannot be followed by a vowel. For that, it must form a trigraph with ''g'': :ᙰ ''ŋai'', ᖏ ''ŋi'', ᖑ ''ŋu'', ᖓ ''ŋa''. It also forms a trigraph with ''n'' for ''ŋŋ'': ᖖ.


Discontinuous (split) trigraphs

The sequence of letters making up a phoneme are not always adjacent. This is the case with English silent e, which has been claimed to modify preceding digraphs as well as preceding single vowel letters. For example, the sequence ''ou...e'' has the sound in English ''joule.'' There are twenty-eight combinations in English, , though it has been argued that a trigraph analysis is unnecessary.Brooks (2015) ''Dictionary of the British English Spelling System,'' p. 463 The
Indic alphabets The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
are distinctive for their discontinuous vowels, such as Thai แ...ะ , เ...าะ , เ...อะ . Technically, however, these may be considered
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s, not full letters; whether they are trigraphs is thus a matter of definition, though they can in turn take modifying vowel diacritics, as in เ◌ียะ and เ◌ือะ .


See also

* Digraph * Hexagraph * Multigraph (orthography) * Pentagraph * Tetragraph *
List of Cyrillic digraphs and trigraphs The following multigraphs are used in the Cyrillic script. The palatalized consonants of Russian and other languages written as C- are mostly predictable and therefore not included here unless they are irregular. Likewise, in the languages ...
*
List of Latin digraphs This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order accordin ...
*
List of Latin letters This is a list of letters of the Latin script. The definition of a Latin-script letter for this list is a character encoded in the Unicode Standard that has a script property of 'Latin' and the general category of 'Letter'. An overview of the ...
*
Trigraph (programming) In computer programming, digraphs and trigraphs are sequences of two and three characters, respectively, that appear in source code and, according to a programming language's specification, should be treated as if they were single characters. V ...
*
Typographic ligature In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first li ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trigraph (Orthography) 3 *