Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram (from the grc, δίς , "double" and , "to write") is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

Some digraphs represent phonemes that cannot be represented with a single character in the writing system of a language, like the English '' sh'' in ''ship'' and ''fish''. Other digraphs represent phonemes that can also be represented by single characters. A digraph that shares its pronunciation with a single character may be a relic from an earlier period of the language when the digraph had a different pronunciation, or may represent a distinction that is made only in certain dialects, like the English '' wh''. Some such digraphs are used for purely etymological reasons, like '' rh'' in English.

Digraphs are used in some Romanization schemes, like the '' zh'' often used to represent the Russian letter ж. As an alternative to digraphs, orthographies and Romanization schemes sometimes use letters with diacritics, like the Czech and Slovak '' š'', which has the same function as the English digraph ''sh,'' like the Romanian ''Ț'', which has the same function as the ''Slavic C'', the letter ''Ť'' that is used in Czech and Slovak, which has the same function as the Hungarian digraph ''Ty'', and the letter with the cedilla in a few Turkic languages that have the same function as the letter with the cedilla below followed by the letter h in English, for example, ''ç'' will become ''ch'' in English, and ''ş'' will become ''sh'' in English.

In some languages' orthographies, digraphs (and occasionally trigraphs) are considered individual letters, which means that they have their own place in the alphabet and cannot be separated into their constituent graphemes when sorting, abbreviating or hyphenating words. Examples of this are found in Hungarian (''cs, dz, dzs, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs''), Czech (''ch''), Slovak (''ch'', ''dz'', ''dž''), Albanian (''dh'', ''gj'', ''ll'', ''nj'', ''rr'', ''sh'', ''th'', ''xh'', ''zh''), Gaj's Latin alphabet (''lj, nj, dž''), and in Uzbek ''(sh, ch, ng)''. Kazakh also used a form of the Latin alphabet where there are a few digraphs and one tetragraph, specifically the 2018 version of the Kazakh latin alphabet ''(sh, ch, shch, ıo)'', and there is still one digraph in the new version of the Latin alphabet ''(şç)''. In Dutch, when the digraph '' ij'' is capitalized, both characters are written in uppercase form (''IJ''). In the Māori language, there are two digraphs in the language that are still part of the alphabet, which is ''ng'' and ''wh''. In Welsh, there are eight digraphs that exist in the official alphabet ''(ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th)''.

In Maltese, there are two digraphs part of the official alphabet (''għ'' and ''ie''). Romanization of the Cyrillic alphabet, especially those used in some Slavic languages, including Russian, resulted in some letters sometimes becoming digraphs, which are the letters (ё, ж, х, ц, ч, ш, щ, ю, я) and can be transliterated into (''jo/yo'', ''zh, kh, ts, ch, sh, shch, yu/ju, ya/ja''), while sometimes romanizing the letters is done by adding diacritics, except for kh and ts, which for kh, sometimes becoming ch or x, and ts sometimes become c (ë, ž, č, š), still with some digraphs (šč, ju/yu, ja/ya). The Czech alphabet used to have a lot of digraphs a few hundred years ago, but through evolution, those digraphs eventually became letters with diacritics, although the Czech language still kept some as those letters with diacritics cannot make the pronunciations of the respective digraphs (ch, dz, dž), which is also the same case with the Slovak alphabet, having a lot of digraphs in the alphabet, and then evolving to become a diacritical letter, and keeping some when the diacritical letters can't make the pronunciation of the respective digraphs.

Digraphs may develop into ligatures, but this is a distinct concept: a ligature involves a graphical combination of two characters, as when ''a'' and ''e'' are fused into '' æ'', and as when o and e are fused into œ. Those two ligatures are still used in some languages. Æ is usually used in Scandinavian languages, specifically Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish. Swedish used to have the letter Æ, but this letter has been changed to become Ä. Œ is usually used in French, but is usually typed in two keystrokes (OE/oe), instead of a special key in the French keyboard or using the AltGr key. In Canada, the keyboard layout (Canadian Multilingual Standard) is modified so that it can use the right Ctrl key to get more characters, including the œ and other foreign characters, sometimes a dead key to input a few kinds of diacritics on some letters to type in the language that use the diacritic in question. The digraph ''ij'' is a special case, especially in Dutch, as when it is handwritten, the capital version (IJ) becomes very similar if not indistinguishable to the cursive letter Y, but if it is written in the regular, lower case version, it will look like a Y with a diaeresis/umlaut (ÿ).

Double letters

Digraphs may consist of two different characters (heterogeneous digraphs) or two instances of the same character (homogeneous digraphs). In the latter case, they are generally called double (or doubled) letters.

Doubled vowel letters are commonly used to indicate a long vowel sound. This is the case in Finnish and Estonian, for instance, where represents a longer version of the vowel denoted by , represents a longer version of the vowel denoted by , and so on. In Middle English, the sequences and were used in a similar way, to represent lengthened "e" and "o" sounds respectively; both spellings have been retained in modern English orthography, but the Great Vowel Shift and other historical sound changes mean that the modern pronunciations are quite different from the original ones.

Doubled consonant letters can also be used to indicate a long or geminated consonant sound. In Italian, for example, consonants written double are pronounced longer than single ones. This was the original use of doubled consonant letters in Old English, but during the Middle English and Early Modern English period, phonemic consonant length was lost and a spelling convention developed in which a doubled consonant serves to indicate that a preceding vowel is to be pronounced short. In modern English, for example, the of ''tapping'' differentiates the first vowel sound from that of ''taping''. In rare cases, doubled consonant letters represent a true geminate consonant in modern English; this may occur when two instances of the same consonant come from different morphemes, for example in ''unnatural'' (''un''+''natural'').

In some cases, the sound represented by a doubled consonant letter is distinguished in some other way than length from the sound of the corresponding single consonant letter:
*In Welsh and Greenlandic, stands for a voiceless lateral consonant, while in Spanish and Catalan it stands for a palatal consonant.
*In several languages of western Europe, including English, French, Portuguese and Catalan, the digraph is used between vowels to represent the voiceless sibilant , since an alone between vowels normally represents the voiced sibilant .
*In Spanish, Catalan, and Basque, is used between vowels for the alveolar trill , since an alone between vowels represents an alveolar flap (the two are different phonemes in those languages).
*In Spanish, the digraph formerly indicated (a palatal nasal); it developed into the letter ñ.
*In Basque, double consonant letters generally mark palatalized versions of the single consonant letter, as in , , . However, is a trill that contrasts with the single-letter flap, as in Spanish, and the palatal version of is written .

In several European writing systems, including the English one, the doubling of the letter or is represented as the heterogeneous digraph instead of or respectively. In native German words, the doubling of , which corresponds to , is replaced by the digraph .

Pan-dialectical digraphs

Some languages have a unified orthography with digraphs that represent distinct pronunciations in different dialects (diaphonemes). For example, in Breton there is a digraph that represents in most dialects, but in ''Vannetais.'' Similarly, the Saintongeais dialect of French has a digraph that represents in words that correspond to in standard French. Similarly, Catalan has a digraph that represents in Eastern Catalan, but or in Western Catalan–Valencian.

Split digraphs

The pair of letters making up a phoneme are not always adjacent. This is the case with English silent e. For example, the sequence ''a_e'' has the sound in English ''cake.'' This is the result of three historical sound changes: ''cake'' was originally , the open syllable came to be pronounced with a long vowel, and later the final schwa dropped off, leaving . Later still, the vowel became . There are six such digraphs in English, .

However, alphabets may also be designed with discontinuous digraphs. In the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet, for example, the letter ''ю'' is used to write both and . Usually the difference is evident from the rest of the word, but when it is not, the sequence ''ю...ь'' is used for , as in ''юнь'' 'cheap'.

The Indic alphabets are distinctive for their discontinuous vowels, such as Thai เ...อ in เกอ . Technically, however, they may be considered diacritics, not full letters; whether they are digraphs is thus a matter of definition.

Ambiguous letter sequences

Some letter pairs should not be interpreted as digraphs but appear because of compounding: ''hogshead'' and ''cooperate''. They are often not marked in any way and so must be memorized as exceptions. Some authors, however, indicate it either by breaking up the digraph with a hyphen, as in ''hogs-head'', ''co-operate'', or with a trema mark, as in ''coöperate'', but the use of the diaeresis has declined in English within the last century. When it occurs in names such as Clapham, Townshend and Hartshorne, it is never marked in any way. Positional alternative glyphs may help to disambiguate in certain cases: when round, was used as a final variant of long , and the English digraph resembling would always be .

In romanization of Japanese, the constituent sounds ( morae) are usually indicated by digraphs, but some are indicated by a single letter, and some with a trigraph. The case of ambiguity is the syllabic ん, which is written as ''n'' (or sometimes ''m''), except before vowels or ''y'' where it is followed by an apostrophe as ''n’''. For example, the given name じゅんいちろう is romanized as Jun’ichirō, so that it is parsed as "Jun-i-chi-rou", rather than as "Ju-ni-chi-rou". A similar use of the apostrophe is seen in pinyin where 嫦娥 is written Chang'e because the g belongs to the final (-ang) of the first syllable, not to the initial of the second syllable. Without the apostrophe, Change would be understood as the syllable chan (final -an) followed by the syllable ge (initial g-).

In several Slavic languages, e.g. Czech, double letters may appear in compound words, but they are not considered digraphs. Examples: ''bezzubý'' ‘toothless’, ''cenný'' ‘valuable’, ''černooký'' ‘black-eyed’.

In alphabetization

In some languages, certain digraphs and trigraphs are counted as distinct letters in themselves, and assigned to a specific place in the alphabet, separate from that of the sequence of characters that composes them, for purposes of orthography and collation. For example:
*In the Gaj’s Latin alphabet used to write Serbo-Croatian, the digraphs , and , which correspond to the single Cyrillic letters , , , are treated as distinct letters.
*In the Czech and Slovak alphabet, is treated as a distinct letter, coming after in the alphabet. Also, in the Slovak alphabet the relatively rare digraphs and are treated as distinct letters.
*In the Danish and Norwegian alphabet, the former digraph , where it appears in older names, is sorted as if it were the letter , which replaced it.
*In the Norwegian alphabet, there are several digraphs and letter combinations representing an isolated sound.
*In the Dutch alphabet, the digraph is sometimes written as a ligature and may be sorted with (in the Netherlands, though not usually in Belgium); however, regardless of where it is used, when a Dutch word starting with 'ij' is capitalized, the entire digraph is capitalized ('' IJmeer'', '' IJmuiden''). Other Dutch digraphs are never treated as single letters.
*In Hungarian, the digraphs , , , , , , , , and the trigraph , have their own places in the alphabet (where follows , and follow , etc.)
*In Spanish, the digraphs and were formerly treated as distinct letters, but are now split into their constituent letters.
*In Welsh, the alphabet includes the digraphs , , , , , , , . However, , and , which represent mutated voiceless consonants, are not treated as distinct letters.
*In the romanization of several Slavic countries that use the Cyrillic script, letters like ш, ж, and ч might be written as sh, zh and ch, however sometimes the result of the romanization might modify a letter to be a diacritical letter instead of a digraph.
*In Maltese, two digraphs are used, għ which comes right after g, and ie which comes right after i.

Most other languages, including English, French, German, Polish, etc., treat digraphs as combinations of separate letters for alphabetization purposes.

Examples

Latin script

English

English has both homogeneous digraphs (doubled letters) and heterogeneous digraphs (digraphs consisting of two different letters). Those of the latter type include the following:

* normally represents ( voiceless alveolar fricative - ''scene'') or ( voiceless postalveolar fricative - ''conscious'') before or .
* represents (velar nasal) as in ''thing''.
* usually corresponds to (voiceless postalveolar affricate - ''church''), to (voiceless velar plosive) when used as an etymological digraph in words of Greek origin (''christ''), less commonly to ( voiceless postalveolar fricative) in words of French origin (''champagne'').
* corresponds to as in ''check''.
* represents (voiced velar plosive) at the beginning of words (''ghost''), represents ( voiceless labiodental fricative in ''enough'') or is silent at the end of words (''sigh'').
* represents ( voiceless labiodental fricative), as in ''siphon''.
* represents English in words of Greek origin, such as ''rhythm''.
* represents ( voiceless postalveolar fricative), as in ''sheep''.
* usually represents word-medially before a vowel, as in ''education''.
* usually corresponds to ( voiceless interdental fricative) in ''thin'' or ( voiced interdental fricative) in ''then''. See also Pronunciation of English .
* represents in some conservative dialects; in other dialects (''while''); and in a few words in which it is followed by , such as ''who'' and ''whole''. See also Phonological history of .
* represents in words transliterated from Slavic languages, and in American dictionary pronunciation spelling.
* usually appears as before vowels, like in ''facial'' and ''artificial''. Otherwise it is as in ''fancier'' and ''icier'' or as in ''acid'' and ''rancid''.
* represents . Originally, it stood for a labialized sound, while without was non-labialized, but the distinction has been lost in most dialects, the two sounds merging into a single alveolar approximant, allophonically labialized at the start of syllables, as in ''red'' . See also rhotic consonant.
* usually represents ; is conventionally followed by and a vowel letter as in ''quick'', with some exceptions.

Digraphs may also be composed of vowels. Some letters are preferred for the first position, others for the second . The latter have allographs in English orthography.

Other languages using the Latin alphabet

In Serbo-Croatian:
* corresponds to , ( palatal lateral approximant)
* corresponds to ( palatal nasal)
* corresponds to (voiced postalveolar affricate)
Note that in the Cyrillic orthography, those sounds are represented by single letters (љ, њ, џ).

In Czech and Slovak:
* corresponds to ( voiceless velar fricative), counted as a distinct letter
* corresponds to ( voiced alveolar affricate), counted as a distinct letter in Slovak, relatively rare digraph
* corresponds to (voiced postalveolar affricate), counted as a distinct letter in Slovak, relatively rare digraph

In Danish and Norwegian:
* The digraph represented until 1917 in Norway and 1948 in Denmark, but is today spelt . The digraph is still used in older names, but sorted as if it were the letter with the diacritic mark.

In Norwegian, several sounds can be represented only by a digraph or a combination of letters. They are the most common combinations, but extreme regional differences exists, especially those of the eastern dialects. A noteworthy difference is the aspiration of rs in eastern dialects, where it corresponds to skj and sj. Among many young people, especially in the western regions of Norway and in or around the major cities, the difference between ç and ʃ has been completely wiped away and are now pronounced the same.

* represents as in ch in German ich or x in México.
* represents as in ch in German ich or x in México.
* represents as in sh in English she.
* represents as in sh in English she.
* represents (before i or y) as in sh in English she.
* represents as in ng in English thing.

In Catalan:
* represents ( palatal lateral approximant)
* represents ( palatal nasal)
* represents ( post-alveolar trill)
* represents (voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant)
* represents (voiceless velar plosive)
* represents (voiced velar plosive)
* postvocalic represents ( voiceless postalveolar fricative) in Eastern dialects, in Western dialects it represents /jʃ/.

In Dutch:

* corresponds to (see above for its possible status as a separate letter).
* represents (velar nasal)
* represents ( voiceless velar fricative)
* represents ( voiceless postalveolar fricative)
* represents (close front unrounded vowel)
* represents ( close back rounded vowel)
* represents ( close-mid front rounded vowel)

In French:
* represents ( voiceless postalveolar fricative)
* represents ( palatal nasal)
* represents (voiceless velar stop), typically before historic front vowels
::
See also French phonology.

In German:
* represents ( voiceless velar fricative) or (voiceless palatal fricative)
* represents (voiceless velar plosive)
* represents (open front unrounded vowel) followed by (near-close near-front unrounded vowel)
* represents (open-mid back rounded vowel) followed by ( near-close near-front rounded vowel)

In Hungarian:
* represents (voiceless postalveolar affricate)
* represents ( voiced postalveolar fricative)
* represents (voiced palatal plosive)
* originally represented ( palatal lateral approximant), but in the modern language stands for ( palatal approximant)
* represents ( palatal nasal)
* represents (voiceless palatal plosive)
* represents (voiced postalveolar affricate)
* represents ( voiceless alveolar fricative) ( is pronounced )
* The Hungarian alphabet additionally contains also a trigraph, .

In Italian:
* corresponds to , ( voiceless postalveolar fricative) before -i and -e (but to before other letters)
* corresponds to (only before i, e)
* corresponds to (only before i, e)
* represents , palatal lateral approximant, before -i (with some exceptions)
* represents ( palatal nasal)

In Manx Gaelic, represents , but represents .

In Polish:
* corresponds to ( voiceless velar fricative)
* corresponds to (voiceless retroflex affricate)
* corresponds to ( voiced alveolar affricate)
* corresponds to ( voiced alveolo-palatal affricate)
* corresponds to (voiced retroflex affricate)
* corresponds to (voiced retroflex fricative)
* corresponds to (voiceless retroflex fricative)

In Portuguese:
* corresponds to ( voiceless postalveolar fricative)
* corresponds to ( palatal lateral approximant)
* corresponds to ( palatal nasal)
*⟨qu⟩ usually represents /k/ (voiceless velar stop)
*:

In Spanish:
* is traditionally (but now usually not) pronounced /ʎ/
* represents (voiceless postalveolar affricate). Since 2010, neither is considered part of the alphabet. They used to be sorted as separate letters, but a reform in 1994 by the Spanish Royal Academy has allowed that they be split into their constituent letters for collation. The digraph , pronounced as a distinct alveolar trill, was never officially considered to be a letter in the Spanish alphabet, and the same is true and (for /ɡ/ and /k/ respectively before or ).

In Welsh:
* represents (velar nasal), the same sound as in English (but in some words is pronounced ).
* represents ( voiceless uvular fricative)
* represents (voiceless alveolar trill), pronounced roughly like the combination ''hr''.
* represents ( voiceless interdental fricative)
* represents (voiced dental fricative), like the English in ''then'' (but is pronounced as voiceless in many contexts).
* represents ( voiceless labiodental fricative), like English , since Welsh is pronounced like an English .
* also represents (voiceless labiodental fricative) but, in modern orthography, is used only for the aspirate mutation of words starting with .
* represents ( voiceless alveolar lateral fricative)
The digraphs listed above represent distinct phonemes and are treated as separate letters for collation purposes. On the other hand, the digraphs , , and the trigraph , which stand for voiceless consonants but occur only at the beginning of words as a result of the nasal mutation, are not treated as separate letters, and thus are not included in the alphabet.

Daighi tongiong pingim, a transcription system used for Taiwanese Hokkien, includes or that represents ( mid central vowel) or (close-mid back rounded vowel), as well as other digraphs.

In Yoruba:

* is an alphabet, and a plosive most accurately pronounced by trying to say and at the same time.

Cyrillic

Modern Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet make little use of digraphs apart from for , for (in Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Bulgarian), and and for the uncommon Russian phoneme . In Russian, the sequences and do occur (mainly in loanwords) but are pronounced as combinations of an implosive (sometimes treated as an affricate) and a fricative; implosives are treated as allophones of the plosive /d̪/ and so those sequences are not considered to be digraphs. Cyrillic has few digraphs unless it is used to write non-Slavic languages, especially Caucasian languages.

Arabic script

Because vowels are not generally written, digraphs are rare in abjads like Arabic. For example, if ''sh'' were used for ''š,'' then the sequence ''sh'' could mean either ''ša'' or ''saha.'' However, digraphs are used for the aspirated and murmured consonants (those spelled with ''h-''digraphs in Latin transcription) in languages of South Asia such as Urdu

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