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This is a list of digraphs used in various
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
s. In the list, letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetical order according to their base, e.g. is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Capitalisation only involves the first letter ( becomes ) unless otherwise stated ( becomes in Dutch, and digraphs marking eclipsis in Irish, are capitalised on the second letter, i.e. becomes ).


Apostrophe

Source: (capital ) is used in
Bari Bari ( ; ; ; ) is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia Regions of Italy, region, on the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy. It is the first most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. It is a port and ...
for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark or ''yin'' tone . It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in Niger, Hausa is replaced with .


A

is used in Taa for the glottalized or creaky-voiced vowel . is used in Dutch, Finnish and other languages with phonemic long vowels for . It was formerly used in Danish and Norwegian (and still is in some proper names) for or (in Danish), until it was replaced with . There is a ligature . In Cantonese romanisations such as Jyutping or Yale, it is used for , contrasting with . is used in Irish for between two "broad" ( velarized) consonants, e.g. "a Gael". : In
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, originally represented the diphthong , before it was monophthongized in the Vulgar Latin period to ; in medieval manuscripts, the digraph was frequently replaced by the ligature . : In Modern English, Latin loanwords with are generally pronounced with (e.g. ''Caesar''), prompting Noah Webster to shorten this to in his 1806 spelling reform for
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
. : In German, is a variant of found in some proper names or in contexts where is unavailable. : In Dutch, is an old spelling variant of but now only occurs in names of people or (less often) places and in a few loanwords from Greek and Latin. : In Zhuang, represents ( represents ). : In Revised Romanization of Korean, represents . is used in Portuguese for stressed when in the final syllable, e.g. ''mãe'' and ''capitães'' . is used in Taa for breathy or murmured . In German and English it typically represents a long vowel . is used in many languages, typically representing the diphthong . In English, due to the Great Vowel Shift, it represents as in ''pain'' and ''rain'', while in unstressed syllables it may represent , e.g. ''bargain'' and ''certain(ly)''. In French, it represents . In Irish and it represents between a broad and a slender consonant. In
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 ...
, it represents or between a broad and a slender consonant, except when preceding word-final or pre-consonant (e.g. , or pre-consonant (e.g. . In the Kernowek Standard orthography of Cornish, it represents , mostly in loanwords from English such as ''paint''. is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in French for , as in or . is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in Scottish Gaelic for or sometimes , between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in modern Portuguese for stressed before consonants, although it is very rare since this diphthong is usually found stressed only at the end of words and therefore spelt as . Alas, it is currently found in some words such as ''cãibra'' . In 1931, in
European Portuguese European Portuguese (, ), also known as Lusitanian Portuguese () or as the Portuguese (language) of Portugal (), refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portugues ...
's orthography, it replaced in all its occurrences due to a small orthographic reform, but this change was soon reverted in 1945 as part of an orthographic agreement with Brazil to match
Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
's orthography, which still kept . is used in Portuguese for in past verb conjugations word finally, before a consonant, and before a vowel. In French, it represents in lieu of before . is used in Portuguese for a stressed before a consonant. is used in many languages to write a nasal vowel. In Portuguese it is used for before a consonant. In French it represents ( before a vowel). In Breton it represents . is used in Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī for . is used in Portuguese for a stressed before a consonant. is used in Tibetan Pinyin for . It is alternately written . is used in Walloon, for the nasal vowel . is used in Lakhota for the nasal vowel is used in many languages, such as Piedmontese and Mandarin Pinyin, to represent . In Irish, it represents ( in Munster) between broad consonants. In
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 ...
, it represents between broad consonants. In French, it is found in a few words such as representing and as representing . In Malagasy, it represents . In Wymysorys, it represents . is used in Portuguese for , but only when it appears stressed, since unstressed is spelt word finally, this distinction usually happens in verb conjugations. E.g. ''eles fizeram'' "they made", and ''eles farão'' "they will make". is used in Taa, for the pharyngealized vowel . is used in English for . It occasionally represents , as in ''flautist''. Other pronunciations are or (depending on dialect) in ''aunt'' and ''laugh'', in ''gauge'', in ''gauche'' and ''chauffeur'', and as in '' meerschaum'' and ''restaurant''. : In German and Dutch, it represents and , respectively ( in some northern and in some southern Dutch and some Flemish dialects). : In French, it represents or sometimes . : In Icelandic and Norwegian it represents and , respectively. : In several Romanizations of Wu Chinese, it represents . : In the Cornish Kernowek Standard, it is used for , as in "cabbage" or "to dance". is used in German for the diphthong in declension of native words with ; elsewhere, is written as . In words, mostly of Latin origin, where and are separated by a syllable boundary, it represents , e.g. (a German form for '' Matthew''). is used in English in ways that parallel English , though it appears more often at the end of a word. In Cornish, it represents or . In Welsh, it represents . is used in English in ways that parallel , though it appears more often at the end of a word. In French, it represents before a vowel (as in ) and before a consonant (as in ). In Cornish, it represents , , , or . (a split digraph) is used in English for .


B

is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi, where stands for . It was used in Portuguese until 1911 in European orthography and 1943 in Brazillian orthography. It had the same sound as . Was used only for etymological purposes. In Hungarian, it represents geminated . In English, doubling a letter indicates that the previous vowel is short (so represents ). In ISO romanized Korean, it is used for the fortis sound , otherwise spelled ; e.g. hobbang. In Hadza it represents the ejective . In several African languages it is implosive . In Cypriot Arabic it is . is used in English for in a few words of Greek origin, such as ''bdellatomy''. When not initial, it represents , as in ''abdicate''. is used in Bavarian and several African languages for the . is used in transcriptions of Indo-Aryan languages for a murmured voiced bilabial plosive (), and for equivalent sounds in other languages. In Juǀʼhoan, it's used for the similar prevoiced aspirated plosive . It is used in Irish to represent (beside ) and (beside ), word-initially it marks the lenition of , e.g. "my boat", "would be". In
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 ...
, it represents , or in a few contexts as between a broad vowel and a broad consonant or between two broad vowels, as in . In the orthography used in Guinea before 1985, was used in Pular (a Fula language) for the voiced bilabial implosive , whereas in Xhosa, Zulu, and Shona, represents the implosive and represents the plosive . In some orthographies of Dan, is and is . is used in Cornish for an optionally pre-occluded ; that is, it represents either or (in any position); (before a consonant or finally); or (before a vowel); examples are ('mother') or ('this'). is used in Sandawe and romanized Thai for . (capital ) is used in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ). is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the voiced labiodental affricate . is used in Shona for a whistled sibilant cluster .


C

was formerly used in Spanish-based spelling systems for Quechua and Aymara for the sound , as in ''Ccozcco'' (modern ''Qusqu'') (' Cuzco'). In Italian, before a front vowel represents a geminated , as in . In Piedmontese and Lombard, represents the sound at the end of a word. In Hadza it is the glottalized click . In English crip slang, can sometimes replace the letters or at the ends of words, such as with ''thicc'', ''protecc'', ''succ'' and ''fucc''. was used for or in Old English ( in Old English sounded like 'edge' in Modern English, while sounded like 'froga'), where both are long consonants. It is used for the click in Naro, and in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless dental click . is used in several languages. In English, it can represent , , , or . See article. is used in Manx for , such as in the word , meaning speech, as a distinction from which is used for . is used in Romani and the Chechen Latin alphabet for . In the Ossete Latin alphabet, it was used for . is used in the Italian for before the non-front vowel letters . In English, it usually represents whenever it precedes any vowel other than . In Polish, it represents whenever it precedes a vowel, and whenever it precedes a consonant (or in the end of the word), and is considered a graphic variant of appearing in other situations. In Romanian, it represents . The digraph is found at the end of a word (deci, atunci, copaci) or before the letters a, o, or u (ciorba, ciuleandra); the sound made by the letter c in front of the letters e or i becomes in front of the three aforementioned vowels, making the addition of the letter i necessary. is used in Friulian for such as in words . It's also used in local orthographies of Lombard to represent derived from Latin . is used in many
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...
in lieu of or to indicate either a geminated , or a with a preceding (historically)
short vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not ...
. The latter is the case with English ''tack'', ''deck'', ''pick'', ''lock'', and ''buck'' (compare ''backer'' with ''baker''). In German, indicates that the preceding vowel is short. Prior to the German spelling reform of 1996, it was replaced by for syllabification. The new spelling rules allow only syllabification of the as a whole: :*Old spelling: : ('sacks') :*New spelling: : :Among the modern Germanic languages, is used mainly in Alsatian, English, German, Luxembourgish, Scots, Swedish, and other
West Germanic languages The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic languages, Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic languages, North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages, East Germ ...
in
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. Similarly, is used for the same purpose in Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, and other West Germanic languages in the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
and
Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
. Compare the word ''nickel'', which is the same in many of these languages except for the customary or spelling. The word is '' nickel'' in English and Swedish, '' Nickel'' in German, and '' nikkel'' in Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic and Norwegian. :It was also used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless dental click (equivalent to ). :It is also used in Cornish for at the end of a syllable after a short vowel; only in loanwords (mostly from English) in the Standard Written Form (SWF), more widely in Kernowek Standard. is used in English for in a few words of Greek origin, such as '' cnidarian''. When not initial, it represents , as in ''acne''. It is used in
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 ...
for , and nasalises the following vowel, as in . is used in Seri for a labialized velar plosive, . It is placed between and in alphabetical order. is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is used in the Hungarian for a voiceless postalveolar affricate, . It is considered a distinct letter, named , and is placed between and in alphabetical order. Examples of words with include ('only'), ('cup'), ('pipe'), ('peppery'). is used in English for in a few words of Greek origin, such as ''ctenoid''. When not initial, it represents , as in ''act''. Is used in Portuguese for in some words, e.g. but not in . is used in languages such as
Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
(that is, based on Spanish or Portuguese orthography) for . In Nahuatl, is used before a vowel, whereas is used after a vowel. is used in modern scholarly editions of Old English for the sound , which was spelled , or in manuscripts. In Middle English these were all replaced by Latin . is used in
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
as an unofficial surrogate of , which represents . is used in Polish for as in ('hello'). In Kashubian, represents . In French and Catalan, historical contracted to the ligature , which represents when followed by . In Hungarian, it was formerly used for the sound , which is now written . In English, is used to represent in the loanwords ''Czech'', and ''Czechia''.


D

is used in Naro for the click , and in Juǀʼhoan for the prevoiced ejective . is used in English to indicate a with a preceding (historically) short vowel (e.g. ''jaded'' has a "long a" while ''ladder'' has a "short a"). In Welsh, represents a voiced dental fricative . It is treated as a distinct letter, named , and placed between and in alphabetical order. In the ISO romanization of Korean, it is used for the fortis sound , otherwise spelled ; examples are and . In Basque, it represents a voiced palatal plosive , as in "mushroom". In several African languages it is implosive . Latin delta (ẟ, lowercase only) is represented by "dd" in Modern Welsh. is used in English for in certain contexts, such as with ''judgement'' and ''hedge'' is used in the Albanian, Swahili, and revived Cornish for the voiced dental fricative . The first examples of this digraph are from the Oaths of Strasbourg, the earliest French text, where it denotes the same sound developed mainly from intervocalic Latin -''t''-. In early traditional Cornish ( yogh), and later , were used for this purpose. Edward Lhuyd is credited for introducing the grapheme to Cornish orthography in 1707 in his ''Archaeologia Britannica''. In Irish it represents (beside ) or (beside ); at the beginning of a word it shows the lenition of , e.g. "my door" (cf. "door"). In
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 ...
it represents (beside ) or or (beside ). :In the pre-1985 orthography of Guinea, was used for the voiced alveolar implosive in Pular. It is currently written . In the orthography of Shona it is the opposite: represents , and . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages, represents a dental stop, . :In addition, is used in various romanization systems. In transcriptions of Indo-Aryan languages, for example, it represents the murmured voiced dental plosive , and for equivalent sounds in other languages. In Juǀʼhoan, it's used for the similar prevoiced aspirated plosive . In the romanization of Arabic, it denotes , which represents in
Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages al ...
. : Represents in Javanese and Somali. is used in Faroese, Portuguese, French and many French-based orthographies for . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, it represents a postalveolar stop such as or ; this sound is also written , , , or . It is also formerly used in Indonesian as . is used in Hmong’s Romanized Popular Alphabet for . In Navajo, it represents , and in Xhosa it represents . In Hadza it is ejective . is used in Tlingit for (in Alaska, is used instead). is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated and nasally released . is used in Yélî Dnye for nasally released . In Cornish, it is used for an optionally pre-occluded ; that is, it is pronounced either or (in any position); (before a consonant or finally); or (before a vowel); examples are ('head') or ('heads'). is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated . is used for the click in Naro. is used in Malagasy for . See . It is used in Fijian for 'ndr' nasalized (). In some Amerindian languages it represents as in Gwichʼin and sporatically everywhere as in Paiwan and Maba is used in Juǀʼhoan for the prevoiced ejective . is used in German, Swedish, and Sandawe orthography as well as the romanization of Thai for . (capital ) is used in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ). is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the voiced dental affricate . is used in some Zapotecan languages for a voiced postalveolar fricative . (It is placed between and in alphabetical order.) In Juǀʼhoan it is used for the prevoiced uvularized plosive . is used in Xhosa for . In Shona, it represents . In Tagalog it is used for . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, it represents a postalveolar stop such as or . This sound is also written , , , , or . is used in several languages, often to represent . See article. is used in the Polish and Sorbian alphabets for , the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate, as in . is never written before a
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
( is used instead, as in 'child'). is used in the Polish for a voiced retroflex affricate (e.g. 'jam'). is used in
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
, Slovak, Lithuanian, and Latvian to represent . See article.


E

is used in Taa, where it represents the glottalised or creaky vowel . is used in many
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s. In English, usually represents the monophthong as in ''meat''; due to a sound change that happened in Middle English, it also often represents the vowel as in ''sweat''. Rare pronunciations occur, like in ''break'', ''great'', ''steak'', and ''yea'', and in the archaic '' ealdorman''. When followed by , it can represent the standard outcomes of the previously mentioned three vowels in this environment: as in ''beard'', as in ''heard'', and as in ''bear'', respectively; as another exception, occurs in the words ''hearken'', ''heart'', and ''hearth''. It often represents two independent vowels, like (''seance''), (''reality''), (''create''), and or (''lineage''). Unstressed, it may represent (''ocean'') and or (''Eleanor''). In Romanian, it represents the diphthong as in ('drunk female'). In Irish, represents between a slender and a broad consonant. In
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 ...
, represents , or between a slender and a broad context, depending on context or dialect. In
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 ...
, it represents the diphthong . is also the transliteration of the rune of the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc. is used in Irish for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in
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 ...
for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in Irish for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in
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 ...
for between a slender and a broad consonant, unless the broad consonant is m, mh, or p, in which case it represents . represents a long mid vowel in a number of languages. In English, represents as in ''teen''. In Dutch and German, represents (though it is pronounced in majority of northern Dutch dialects). In the Cantonese Romanisation, it represents as in English, or for characters which might be pronounced as in other dialects. In Bouyei, is used for plain , as stands for . is used in Taa for the murmured vowel . In the Wade-Giles transliteration of Mandarin Chinese, it is used for after a consonant, as in ''yeh'' . In German, represents , as in . This digraph was taken over from
Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High ...
, where it represented . It usually represents a diphthong. In Modern German, is predominant in representing , as in ''Einstein'', while the equivalent digraph appears in only a few words. In English, can represent many sounds, including , as in ''vein'', as in ''seize'', as in ''heist'', as in ''heifer'', as in ''enceinte'', and or as in ''forfeit''. See also I before e except after c. In southern and western Faroese dialects, it represents the diphthong , while in northern and eastern dialects, it represents the diphthong . In Portuguese, represents in Greater Lisbon, so do and , but or in Brazil, East Timor, Macau, rest of Portugal, and Portuguese-speaking African countries, In Welsh, represents . In Irish and
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 ...
, it represents or , or when unstressed, before a slender consonant. In Dutch and Afrikaans, represents . In French, represents , as in . In Hepburn romanization of the
Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
it is used to transcribe the sound . is used in French for , as in . is used in Irish for between slender consonants. is used in
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 ...
for or between slender consonants. is used in Swedish in some short words, such as or . is used in Portuguese for at the end of a word and before a consonant. In French orthography, it represents a when it is followed by or . is used in Portuguese for at the end of a word. is used in Portuguese for at the end of a word. is used in Portuguese for at the end of a word and before a consonant. is used in Portuguese for at the end of a word followed or not by an as in or ; and for before a consonant within a word. In French, it represents or . is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in Irish for ( in 4 words) between a slender and a broad consonant. In Scottish Gaelic it is used for between a slender and a broad consonant. In the Jyutping romanization of Cantonese, it represents , an allophone of , while in the Cantonese Romanisation, it represents . In the Revised Romanization of Korean, represents the open-mid back unrounded vowel , and in Piedmontese it is . In English is a rare digraph without a single pronunciation, representing in '' feoff'', ''jeopardy'', ''leopard'' and the given names ''Geoffrey'' and ''Leonard'', in ''people'', in ''
yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of Serfdom, servants in an Peerage of England, English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in Kingdom of England, mid-1 ...
'' and in the archaic '' feodary'', while in the originally Gaelic name MacLeod it represents . However, usually it represents two vowels, like in ''leotard'' and ''galleon'', in ''stereo'' and, in '' geodesy'', and, uniquely, in '' geoduck''. is used in
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 ...
for word-initially, and elsewhere. is used in Taa for the pharyngealized vowel . is found in many
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s, most commonly for the diphthong . Additionally, in English, represents as in ''neuter'' ( in yod-dropping accents); however, the in "maneuver/manoeuvre" always represents even in most non yod-dropping accents. In German, it represents as in ; and in French, Dutch, Breton, and Piedmontese, it represents . In Cornish, it represents either long and short or long and short . In
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 ...
it normally represents , as in , except when preceding (e.g. ) and usually , or in certain high-register words such as where it represents , and in southern dialects it is in most contexts. In Yale romanization of Cantonese it represents , while in the Cantonese Romanisation, it represents . In romanization of Wu Chinese, it represents , depending on the lect. In Sundanese and Acehnese, it represents as in ('red'). In the Revised Romanization of Korean, it represents . is used in French for , as in . is used in English for as in ''few'' and ''flew''. An exception is the pronunciation in ''sew'', leading to the heteronym ''sewer'',(, 'drain') vs ''sewer'' (, 'one who sews'). In Cornish, it stands for . is used in the Kernowek Standard orthography of Cornish to refer to a sound that can be either or . This distribution can also be written . is used in English for a variety of sounds, including in ''they'', in ''key'', and in ''geyser''. In Faroese, it represents the diphthong . In Cornish, it represents the diphthong or . (a split digraph) indicates an English 'long e', historically but now most commonly realised as . is used for in Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī.


F

, which may be written as the typographic ligature , is used in English and Cornish for the same sound as single , . The doubling is used to indicate that the preceding vowel is (historically) short, or for etymological reasons, in latinisms. Very rarely, may be found word-initially in English, such as in proper names (e.g., Rose ffrench, Jasper Fforde). In Welsh, represents , while represents . In Welsh, is considered a distinct letter, and placed between and in alphabetical order. In medieval Breton, vowel nasalisation was represented by a following . This notation was reformed during the 18th century, though proper names retain the former convention, which leads to occasional mispronunciation. is used in Irish and
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 ...
for the lenition of . This happens to be silent, so that in Gaelic corresponds to no sound at all, e.g. the Irish phrase "how long", where is the lenited form of "long". However, in three Scottish Gaelic words, , , and , it is pronounced as . is used in Nambikwara for a glottalized .


G

is used in Uzbek to represent . is used in some African languages for a voiced labial-velar plosive, . is used in languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu, for the click . (capital ) is used in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ). is used in French for before as in . is used in English for before , and (e.g. ''doggy''). It is also used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi. In Central Alaskan Yup'ik, it represents . In Greenlandic, it represents . In the ISO romanization of Korean, it is used for the fortis sound , otherwise spelled (e.g. '' ggakdugi''). In Hadza it is ejective . In Italian, before a front vowel represents a geminated , as in . In Piedmontese and Lombard, is an etymological spelling representing an at the end of a word which is the unvoicing of an ancient . is used in several languages. In English, it can be silent or represent or . See article. is used in Vietnamese for in northern dialects and in the southern ones. In Italian, it represents before the non-front vowel letters . In Romansh it represents before (written before front vowels). is used in Albanian for the voiced palatal plosive , though for Gheg speakers it represents . In the Arbëresh dialect, it represents the voiced velar plosive . In Norwegian and Swedish represents in words like ('did'). In Faroese, it represents . It is also used in the Romanization of Macedonian as a Latin equivalent of
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
. Also, it's used in Friulian to represent (whilst is one of the pronunciations of the letter ⟨z⟩). It can be found in some local orthographies of Lombard to represent derived from Latin ⟨gl⟩. Before the letter Đ was introduced into Gaj's Latin alphabet in 1878, the digraph ⟨gj⟩ had been used instead; and it remained in use till the beginning of the 20th century. is used in Sandawe and the romanization of Thai for ; in Limburgish it represents . Modern Greek uses the equivalent digraph γ κ for , as γ is used for ~ . is used in Italian and some African languages for . is used in English for in a few words of Greek origin, such as ''phlegm'' and ''paradigm''. Between vowels, it simply represents , as in ''paradigmatic''. is used in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, where it represented in the classical period. Latin velar- coronal sequences like this (and also ) underwent a palatal mutation to varying degrees in most Italo-Western Romance languages. For most languages that preserve the spelling (such as Italian and French), it represents a palatal nasal (or more precisely in Italian), and is similarly used in
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 ...
schemes such as Wugniu for . This was not the case in Dalmatian and the Eastern Romance languages where a different mutation changed the velar component to a labial consonant as well as the spelling to . In Portuguese, represents , as if there was no , e.g. , , and . It is used in
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 ...
for , and nasalises the following vowel, as in . :In English, represents initially (see /gn/ reduction) and finally (i.e. ''gnome, gnu, benign, sign''). When it appears between two syllables, it represents (e.g. ''signal''). In Norwegian and Swedish, represents in monosyllabic words like , and between two syllables, . Initially, it represents , e.g. Swedish . was used in several Spanish-derived orthographies of the Pacific for . It is one of several variants of the digraph , and is preserved in the name of the town of Sagñay,
Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
. is used in Piedmontese for (like the “gu” in
Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
). is used in languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu, for the click . In the Taa language, it represents . is used in Xhosa for . is used in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Catalan for before front vowels ( in English and French) where a "soft g" pronunciation (English ; Spanish ; French, Portuguese and Catalan ) would otherwise occur. In English, it can also be used to represent . In the Ossete Latin alphabet, it is used for . is used in Spanish, Catalan and formely Portuguese for before front vowels where the digraph would otherwise represent . is used for in Standard Zhuang and in Bouyei. In the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages it is used for the labialized fricative . is used in various languages for , and in Dene Suline it represents . , capital (or ), is used in Tlingit for (in Alaska); in Canada, this sound is represented by . is used in languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu, for the click . In
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
, it is an unofficial surrogate of , which represents . is used in Hungarian for a voiced palatal plosive . In Hungarian, the letter's name is . It is considered a single letter, and acronyms keep the digraph intact. The letter appears frequently in Hungarian words, such as the word for "Hungarian" itself: . In the old orthography of Bouyei, it was used for . It is also commonly used in Burmese romanization schemes to represent . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the voiced alveolar click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the voiced dental click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the voiced lateral click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the voiced palatal click .


H

is used in Xhosa to write the murmured glottal fricative , though this is often written . In the Iraqw language, is the voiceless epiglottal fricative , and in Chipewyan it is a velar/uvular . In Esperanto orthography, it is an official surrogate of , which represents . is used in the Italian dialect of Albanian for . In Faroese, it represents either or , and in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, it represents . In Icelandic it is used to denote . is used for or in various alphabets, such as the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong () and Icelandic (). See also reduction of Old English /hl/. is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, where it represents the sound . is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, where it represents the sound . It is also used in Icelandic to denote the same phoneme. See also reduction of Old English /hn/. is used for in Bouyei. In Icelandic it is used for . See also reduction of Old English /hr/. is used in the Wade-Giles transcription of Mandarin Chinese for the sound , equivalent to Pinyin . is used primarily in the Classical Nahuatl language, in which it represents the sound before a vowel; for example, ''Wikipedia'' in Nahuatl is written . After a vowel, is used. In the Ossete Latin alphabet, was used for , similar to French . The sequence is also found in Spanish words such as or ; however, in Spanish this is not a digraph but a simple sequence of silent and the vowel . is used Faroese and Icelandic for (often ), generally in wh-words, but also in other words, such as Faroese . In the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages it is used for the supposed fricative . is used in modern editions of
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 ...
for , originally spelled or (the latter with the
wynn Wynn or wyn (; also spelled wen, win, ƿynn, ƿyn, ƿen, and ƿin) is a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound . History The letter "W" While the earliest Old English texts ...
letter). In its descendants in modern English, it is now spelled (see there for more details). It is used in some orthographies of Cornish for . is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi ( alone represents the fricative ), and in Nambikwara it is a glottalized . In Esperanto orthography, it is an unofficial surrogate of , which represents . is used in Hepburn romanization of the
Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
to transcribe the sound , which is the syllable ''hi'' before a ''y''-vowel, such as ''hya'', ''hyu'', and ''hyo'', which appear in Chinese loanwords. Was also used in Portuguese until 1947. It appeared in words like: Hydroginástica and Hypóthese.


I

is used in Taa to represent the glottalized or creaky vowel . is used in Irish and
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 ...
for the diphthong . is used in English, where it usually represents the sound as in ''pries'' and ''allied'' or the sound as in ''priest'' and ''rallied''. Followed by an , these vowels follow the standard changes to and , as in ''brier'' and ''bier''. Unique pronunciations are in ''sieve'', in ''friend'', and in ''lingerie''. Unstressed it can represent , as in ''spaniel'' and ''conscience'', or or as in ''mischief'' and ''hurriedly''. It also can represent many vowel combinations, including in ''diet'' and ''client'', in ''diester'' and ''quiescent'', in ''alien'' and ''skier'', in ''oriental'' and ''hygienic'', and in British ''medieval''. :In Dutch and Afrikaans, represents the tense vowel . In German, it may represent the lengthened vowel as in (love) as well as the vowel combination as in (Belgium). In Latvian and Lithuanian, is considered two letters for all purposes and represents , commonly (although less precisely) transcribed as . In Maltese, is a distinct letter and represents a long close front unrounded vowel, or . In Pinyin it is used to write the vowel in languages such as Yi, where stands for . In
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 ...
was one of the common diphthongs, the umlauted version of and . Its value is not entirely clear, and in Middle English it had become . is used in Afrikaans for . is used in Catalan for (ch as in cheese) in the coda. , is used in Taa to represent the breathy or murmured vowel . It is also used in Tongyong Pinyin and Wade-Giles transcription for the fricative vowels of Mandarin Chinese, which are spelled in Hanyu Pinyin. is used in many languages such as Portuguese (e.g. Aniilar, Sacerdócii) and Finnish (e.g. Riikka, Niinistö, Siitala, Riikkeli), Italian (e.g. Riina), Estonian (e.g. Riik), Scots (e.g. Auld Nii, Iisay), with phonemic long vowels for . is used in Portuguese for . In Portuguese, when forming the superlative absolute synthetic form of adjectives that end in "-io," they often end up with "ii" in the spelling. This happens because the "-íssimo(a)" suffix is added directly to the adjective (e.g. feio(a) -> feiíssimo(a), sério(a) -> seriíssimo(a)). is used in Dutch for . See article. is used in French for , historically , as in (approximately in English) "garlic". Can also be written as as in . is used in Portuguese for . is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in Portuguese for the diphthong . is used in many languages to write a nasal vowel. In Portuguese before a consonant, and in many
West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...
n languages, it is , while in French it is . is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in French to write a vowel sound that was once followed by a historical , as in "you came". is used in Lakota for the nasal vowel . is used in Irish for , , and between a slender and a broad consonant. In
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 ...
it is used for and sometimes between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in Irish for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in
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 ...
for and between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in Taa to represent the pharyngealized vowel . is used in Irish for between a slender and a broad consonant. In Scottish Gaelic, it is used for between a slender and a broad consonant. In Mandarin pinyin, it is after a consonant. (In initial position, this is spelled ). is used in Irish for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in
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 ...
for between a slender and a broad consonant. is used in Welsh and Cornish for the diphthong or . is used in Catalan for (Eastern Catalan) or (Western Catalan) after a vowel. (a split digraph) indicates an English 'long i', historically but now most commonly realised as .


J

is used in Walloon to write a consonant that is variously , or , depending on the dialect. In Tongyong pinyin, it represents , written in standard pinyin. is also the standard transliteration for the
Devanāgarī Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
letter झ . In
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
, it is an official surrogate of , which represents . In Latin American Spanish, it is sometimes used in first names (like Jhon and Jhordan) to represent and distinguish it from the typical sound of in Spanish, . is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi. In romanized Korean, it represents the fortis sound . In Hadza it is ejective . is used as a letter of the Seri alphabet, where it represents a labialized velar fricative, . It is placed between J and L in alphabetical order. is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is used in
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
as an unofficial surrogate of , which represents .


K

is used in Nuxalk for . is used for in southern African languages such as Setswana and Sotho. For instance, the Kalahari is spelled in Setswana. , in transcriptions of Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...
, represents the aspirated voiceless velar plosive (). For most other languages, it represents the voiceless velar fricative , for example in transcriptions of the letter () in standard Arabic, standard Persian, and Urdu, Cyrillic '' Х'', ''х'' (kha), Spanish , as well as the Hebrew letter kaf () in instances when it is lenited. When used for transcription of the letter () in Sephardic Hebrew, it represents the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . In Canadian Tlingit it represents , which in Alaska is written ''k''. In the Ossete Latin alphabet, it was used for . is used Swedish and Norwegian for or . See also . In Faroese, it represents . In the romanization of Macedonian, it represents . is used in romanized Korean for the fortis sound , in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) for ejective , and in Cypriot Arabic for . is used in Zulu to write a sound variously realized as or . is used in Yélî Dnye doubly articulated and nasally released . is used in English to write the word-initial sound ( formerly pronounced /kn/) in some words of Germanic origin, such as ''knee'' and ''knife''. It is used in Yélî Dnye for nasally released . is used as a letter in some African languages, where it represents a voiceless labial-velar plosive . is used in Xhosa for . is used in Cornish for either or . is used in Purépecha for . It also had that value in the Ossete Latin alphabet. is used for in some dialects of Zhuang. is used in various languages for the labialized velar consonant , and in Dene Suline (Chipewyan) for . Used informally in English for phonemic spelling of '' qu'', as in '' kwik'' (from ''quick''), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European . is used in Alaskan Tlingit for , which in Canada is written . in used in Nambikwara for a glottalized , and in Juǀʼhoan for the ejective . is used in Tibetan Pinyin for . It is commonly used in Burmese romanization schemes to represent (⟨ch⟩ is already used to represent aspirated ).


L

, in Occitan, Gallo, and Portuguese, represents a palatal lateral approximant . In many Indigenous languages of the Americas it represents a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages it represents a dental lateral, . In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, initial indicates an even tone on a syllable beginning in , which is otherwise spelled . In Middle Welsh it was sometimes used to represent the sound as well as , in modern Welsh it has been replaced by . In Tibetan, it represents the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant , as in ''
Lhasa Lhasa, officially the Chengguan District of Lhasa City, is the inner urban district of Lhasa (city), Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, Southwestern China. Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining ...
''. is a letter in some Slavic languages, such as the Latin orthographies of
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
, where it represents a palatal lateral approximant . For example, the word is pronounced . Ljudevit Gaj first used the digraph in 1830; he devised it by analogy with a
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
digraph, which developed into the ligature . In Swedish, it represents in initial position e.g. . :The sound is written in Italian, in Castilian Spanish and Catalan as , in Portuguese as , in some Hungarian dialects as , and in Latvian as . In Czech and Slovak, it is often transcribed as ; it is used more frequently in the latter language. While there are dedicated Unicode codepoints, U+01C7 (LJ), U+01C8 (Lj) and U+01C9 (lj), these are included for backwards compatibility (with legacy encodings for Serbo-Croatian which kept a one-to-one correspondence with Cyrillic Љљ) and modern texts use a sequence of Basic Latin characters. and are used in several languages. See article. is used in Asturian for a sound that was historically but which is now an affricate, . is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated . is used for in Arrernte. in used in Nambikwara for a glottalized . is used in Hungarian. See article.


M

, in many African languages, represents or . In English, it represents when final, as in ''lamb'' (see reduction of /mb/). In Standard Zhuang and in Bouyei, is used for . (capital ) is used word initially in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ); e.g. "our boat" (cf. "boat"), "in Dublin". is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated and prenasalized . , in many African languages, represents or . is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi, where the more common digraph is restricted to . It is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated and prenasalized . is used in Irish, as the lenition of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ), e.g. "my mother" (cf. 'mother'). In
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 ...
, it represents , or in a few contexts as between a broad vowel and a broad consonant or between two broad vowels, as in .. In Welsh it stands for the nasal mutation of and represents the voiceless ; for example 'my head' (cf. 'head'). In both languages it is considered a sequence of the two letters and for purposes of alphabetization. In Shona, Juǀʼhoan and several other languages, it is used for a murmured . In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, initial - indicates an even tone on a syllable beginning in , which is otherwise spelled -. In several languages, such as Gogo, it's a voiceless . is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, where it represents the sound . is used in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) for glottalized . It is used in Cornish for an optionally pre-occluded ; that is, it is pronounced either or (in any position); (before a consonant or finally); or (before a vowel); examples are ('mother') or ('this'). is used in English to write the word-initial sound in a few words of Greek origin, such as ''mnemonic''. When final, it represents , as in ''damn'' or as in ''hymn'', and between vowels it represents as in ''damning'', or as in ''damnation'' (see /mn/-reduction). In French it represents , as in and . , in many African languages, represents or . Modern Greek uses the equivalent digraph μ π for , as β is used for . In Mpumpong of Cameroon, is a plain . is used in Juǀʼhoan for a pharyngealized or perhaps creaky . is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated and prenasalized . , in many African languages, represents or . is used for in Arrernte. is used in Nambikwara for a glottalized .


N

is used in Xhosa and Shona for . Since is not a letter in either language, is not technically a digraph. is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi. It is also used in Fula in Guinea for (written as in other countries). is used in various alphabets. In the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, it represents the sound . In Tharaka it is . In Xhosa and Zulu it represents the click . (capital ) is used in many African languages to represent or . In Standard Zhuang and Bouyei, itrepresents . (capital ) is used word initially in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) and (beside ), e.g. "our door" (cf. "door"), "in Derry". , equivalent to for or . In Rangi is while is . , in Sino-Tibetan languages, as in English and several other European and derived orthographies (for example Vietnamese), generally represents the velar nasal . It is considered a single letter in many Austronesian languages ( Māori, Tagalog, Tongan, Gilbertese, Tuvaluan, Indonesian, Chamorro), Welsh, and Rheinische Dokumenta, for velar nasal ; and in some African languages ( Lingala, Bambara, Wolof) for prenasalized (). :For the development of the pronunciation of this digraph in English, see NG-coalescence and G-dropping. : Finnish uses to represent the phonemically long velar nasal in contrast to , which is its "strong" form under consonant gradation, a type of lenition. Weakening produces an archiphonemic "velar fricative", which, as a velar fricative does not exist in Standard Finnish, is assimilated to the preceding , producing . (No is involved at any point, despite the spelling ). The digraph is not an independent letter, but it is an exception to the phonemic principle, one of the few in standard Finnish. : (capital ) is used word-initially in Irish, as the eclipsis of , to represent (beside ) or (beside ), e.g. "our illness" (cf. ), "in Galway". :In Tagalog and other Philippine languages, represented the prenasalized sequence during the Spanish era. The velar nasal, , was written in a variety of ways, namely "n͠g", "ñg", "gñ" (as in Sagñay), and—after a vowel—at times "g̃". During the standardization of Tagalog in the early part of the 20th century, became used for the velar nasal , while prenasalized came to be written . Furthermore, is also used for a common genitive particle pronounced , to differentiate it from an adverbial particle . :In Uzbek, it is considered as a separate letter, being the last (twenty-ninth) letter of the Uzbek alphabet. It is followed by the apostrophe (''tutuq belgisi''). is used in Central Alaskan Yup'ik to write the voiceless nasal sound . , or more precisely , was a digraph in several Spanish-derived orthographies of the Pacific, such as Tagalog and Chamorro, where it represented the sound , as opposed to , which originally represented . An example is Chamorro (modern ) "to declare". Besides , variants of include (as in Sagñay), , and a , that is preceded by a vowel (but not a consonant). It has since been replaced by the trigraph or (see above). is used for in Swahili and languages with Swahili-based orthographies. Since is not a letter in Swahili, is technically a digraph, not a trigraph. is used in several languages. See article. in Polish, it usually represents whenever it precedes a vowel, and whenever it precedes a consonant (or in the end of the word), and is considered a graphic variant of ń appearing in other situations. (In some cases it may represent also before a vowel; for a better description, when, see the relevant section in the article on Polish orthography). is a letter in the Latin orthographies of Albanian, Slovenian and
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
. Ljudevit Gaj, a Croat, first used this digraph in 1830. In all of these languages, it represents the palatal nasal . For example, the Croatian and Serbian word "horse" is pronounced . The digraph was created in the 19th century by analogy with a digraph of
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
, which developed into the ligature . While there are dedicated Unicode codepoints, U+01CA (NJ), U+01CB (Nj) and U+01CC (nj), these are included for backwards compatibility (with legacy encodings for Serbo-Croatian which kept a one-to-one correspondence with Cyrillic Њњ) and modern texts use a sequence of Basic Latin characters. :In Faroese, it generally represents , although in some words it represent , like in ''banjo''. It is also used in some languages of Africa and Oceania where it represents a prenazalized voiced postalveolar affricate or
fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
, or . In Malagasy, it represents . :Other letters and digraphs of the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
used for spelling this sound are (in Polish), (in Czech and Slovakian), (in Spanish), (in Portuguese and Occitan), (in Italian and French), and (in Hungarian, among others). is used in many Bantu languages like Lingala, Tshiluba, and Kikongo, for or . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, it distinguishes a prenasalized velar stop, , from the nasal . is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated . is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated . is used in Irish to represent the fortis nasals (beside ) and (beside ). It is used in
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 ...
to represent beside and beside . In Spanish historical has contracted to the ligature and represents the sound . In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, final ''-nn'' indicates a falling tone on a syllable ending in , which is otherwise spelled ''-n''. It is used in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) for glottalized . In Piedmontese, it is in the middle of a word, and at the end. In Cornish, it is used for an optionally pre-occluded ; that is, it is pronounced either or (in any position); (before a consonant or finally); or (before a vowel); examples are ('head') or ('heads'). is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, where it represents the sound . is used in various alphabets. In the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, it represents the sound . In Xhosa and Zulu it represents the click . In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, final ''-nq'' indicates a falling tone on a syllable ending in , which is otherwise spelled ''-ng''. is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, where it represents the sound . In the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages it is . , in many African languages, represents or . is a letter present in many African languages where it represents or . Modern Greek uses the equivalent digraph ν τ for , as δ is used for . , equivalent to for or . is used in Igbo for , and in Arrernte for . is used for the click in Xhosa and Zulu, and in Nambikwara for a glottalized . is used in several languages for . See article. , in many African languages, represents ~ , ~ , ~ , or ~ . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the alveolar nasal click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the dental nasal click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the lateral nasal click . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the palatal nasal click . is used for medial in Piedmontese.


O

is used for and in Uzbek, with the preferred typographical form being (Cyrillic ). Technically it is not a digraph in Uzbek, since is not a letter of the Uzbek alphabet, but rather a typographic convention for a diacritic. In handwriting the letter is written as . It is also used in Taa, for the glottalized or creaky vowel . is used in English, where it commonly represents the sound as in ''road'', ''coal'', ''boast'', ''coaxing'', etc. In
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 ...
, where the digraph originated, it represented , a pronunciation retained in the word ''broad'' and derivatives, and when the digraph is followed by an "r", as in ''soar'' and ''
bezoar A bezoar stone ( ) is a mass often found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, though it can occur in other locations. A pseudobezoar is an indigestible object introduced intentionally into the digestive system. There are several varieties o ...
''. The letters also represent two vowels, as in ''koala'' , '' boas'' , '' coaxial'' , ''oasis'' , and ''doable'' . In Malagasy, it is occasionally used for . is found in many
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s. In English, it represents the sound as in ''hoe'' and sometimes the sound as in ''shoe''. It may also represent the sound in AmE pronunciation of '' Oedipus'', ''(o)esophagus'' (also in BrE), and ''(o)estrogen'', in ''boehmite'' (AmE) and surnames like '' Boehner'' and '' Groening'' (as if spelled ''Bayner'' and ''Gray/Greyning'' respectively), and in ''foetus'' (BrE and CoE) and some speakers' pronunciation of ''Oedipus'' and ''oestrogen''. represents in Afrikaans and Dutch, e.g. ; it also represented the same phoneme in the Indonesian language before the 1972 spelling reform. Ligatured to in French, it stands for the vowels (as in ) and (as in ). It is an alternative way to write or in German or Scandinavian languages when this character is unavailable. In romanization of Wu Chinese and in Royal Thai General System of Transcription, it represents . In the ILE romanization of Cantonese it represents the vowel , while in the Jyutping romanisation of Cantonese it represents , and in Zhuang it is used for ( is used for ). In Piedmontese, it is . In the Kernewek Kemmyn orthography of Cornish, it is used for a phoneme which is long, mid-length, and short. is used in French to write the vowel sound in a few words before what had historically been an , mostly in words derived from "stove". The diacriticless variant, , rarely represents this sound except in words related to (rarely spelt ). is used in Afrikaans for the vowel . is used in Portuguese for . It is used in plural forms of some words ended in , such as – and –. is used in Taa, for the breathy or murmured vowel . is used in various
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s. In English, it represents the sound as in ''coin'' and ''join''. In French, it represents , which was historically – and still is in some cases – written . In Irish it is used for between a broad and a slender consonant. In
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 ...
it is used for , except before word-finally or pre-consonant, where it is . In Piedmontese, it is . is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in French to write before what had historically been an , as in or . is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. It is also used in Portuguese. is used in Piedmontese for . It is used in
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 ...
for or is used in Portuguese for , and in French to write . is used in
Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
for before a consonant. is used in Portuguese for before a consonant, and in French to write . is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in Tibetan Pinyin for . It is alternately written oin. is used in many
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s. In English, it generally represents sounds which historically descend from the Middle English pronunciation . After the Great Vowel Shift, this came to typically represent as in "m''oo''n" and "f''oo''d". Subsequently, in a handful of common words like "g''oo''d" and "fl''oo''d" the vowel was shortened to , and after the Middle English – split, these became and respectively. Like in
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 ...
, the digraph's pronunciation is in most other languages. In German and Dutch, the digraph represents . In Cornish, it represents either or . In Tâi-lô orthography for Taiwanese Hokkien, it represents . Is used in Taa, for the pharyngealized vowel . , in Daighi tongiong pingim, represents mid central vowel or close-mid back rounded vowel in Taiwanese Hokkien.董峰政, "Taiwanese Tong-iong Pingim Dictionary", 臺南市寧南語言文化協會, Tainan City, Jul 2006. is used in English for the diphthong , as in ''out'' . This spelling is generally used before consonants, with being used instead before vowels and at the ends of words. Occasionally may also represent other vowels – as in ''trouble'', as in ''soul'', as in ''would'', as in ''group'', or as in the alternate American pronunciation of ''coupon''. The in ''out'' originally represented , as in French, and its pronunciation has mostly changed as part of the Great Vowel Shift. However, the sound was kept before . In Dutch represents in the Netherlands or in Flanders. In Cornish, it represents , , or . In French, it represents the
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
, as in "you", or the approximant consonant , as in "yes". In Portuguese this digraph stands for the close-mid back rounded vowel or for the falling diphthong , according to dialect. is used In Hepburn romanization of the
Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
to transcribe the sound . is used in French to write the vowel sound before what had historically been an , as in "drunk" (also spelt ). , in English, usually represents the sound as in ''coward'', ''sundowner'', and ''now'' or the sound, as in ''froward'', ''landowner'', and ''know''. An exceptional pronunciation is in ''knowledge'' and '' rowlock''. There are many English heteronyms distinguished only by the pronunciation of this digraph, like: ''bow'' (front of ship or weapon), ''bower'' (a dwelling or string player), ''lower'' (to frown or drop), ''mow'' (to grimace or cut), ''row'' (a dispute or line-up), ''shower'' (rain or presenter), ''sow'' (a pig or to seed), ''tower'' (a building or towboat). In Cornish, this represents the diphthong or ; before vowels, it can also represent . is used in the Kernowek Standard orthography of Cornish to refer to a sound that can be either or . This distribution can also be written . is found in many
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s. In English and Faroese, represents the diphthong . Examples in English include ''toy'' and ''annoy''. In Cornish, it represents the diphthong ; in the words ('egg') and ('much'), it can also be pronounced . is an obsolete digraph once used in French. is used in Norwegian for . (a split digraph) indicates an English 'long o', historically but now most commonly realised as .


P

is used in Nuxalk for . is used in German for , e.g. "horse", "apple", and "button". In English, usually in recent loan words from German, it generally represents , such as in Pfizer. in used in English and French for , mostly in words derived from Greek, but also some words derived from Vietnamese. In Irish,
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 ...
and Welsh it represents the lenition/ Aspirate mutation of . It represents in Vietnamese, where is not used. is used in the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, for . is used for in Arrernte. is used in English for initially in words of Greek origin such as ''pneumatic''. is used in romanized Korean for the fortis sound , and in Cypriot Arabic for . It was used in Portuguese until 1947, e.g. , and . is used in English and Portuguese for initially in words of Greek origin such as ''psyche'' (English) and (Portuguese). In Shona it represents a whistled sibilant cluster . is used in several languages for in words of Greek origin, where it was , e.g. in English '' pterosaur'' . is used in Arrernte for . is used in Cypriot Arabic for .


Q

is used in Nuxalk for . is used in Naro for the click . It was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless alveolar click . is used in various alphabets. In Quechua and the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, it represents . In Xhosa, it represents the click . was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless alveolar click (equivalent to ). is used in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) for ejective . In Hadza it represents the glottalized click . is used in Aragonese, Asturian, Catalan, French, Galician, Mirandese, Occitan, Portuguese and Spanish for before , where represents ( Castilian Spanish, Asturian, Aragonese and most of Galicia) or ( Catalan, French, American Spanish, Occitan and Portuguese). In French, is also usually before . This dates to
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, and ultimately the Proto-Indo-European labialized velar consonant ; in English this sound instead became written primarily as , due to
Grimm's law Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or First Germanic Sound Shift, is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the first millennium BC, first d ...
changing > (written ), and Middle English spelling change switching to . In English, it represents in words derived from those languages (e.g., ''quiche''), and in other words, including borrowings from Latin (e.g., ''quantity''). In German, it represents . In the Ossetian Latin alphabet, it was used for . In Vietnamese it is used to represent or . In Cornish, it represents . is used in French and formely Portuguese for before . is used in Bouyei for . is used in some languages for . In Mi'kmaq it represents . In the Kernowek Standard and Standard Written Form orthographies for Revived Cornish, it represents . is used in Bouyei for glottalized .


R

is used in the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara for a retroflex stop, . In Norwegian and Swedish it represents voiced retroflex plosive, . In
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 ...
it sometimes represents when broad, or when slender, though this epenthetic consonant is not found in all dialects. is used in English for Greek words
transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
through
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
. Examples include "rhapsody", "rhetoric" and "rhythm". These were pronounced in Ancient Greek with a voiceless "r" sound, , as in
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 ...
. The digraph may also be found within words, but always at the start of a word component, e.g., "polyrhythmic". German, French, and Interlingua use in the same way. is also found in Welsh where it represents a voiceless alveolar trill (), that is a voiceless "r" sound. It can be found anywhere; the most common occurrence in English from Welsh is in the slightly respelled given name "Rhonda". In Wade-Giles transliteration, is used for the syllable-final rhotic of Mandarin Chinese. In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, initial - indicates an even tone on a syllable beginning in , which is otherwise spelled -. In Purépecha, it is a retroflex flap, . is used in the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, as well in Norwegian and Swedish, for a retroflex lateral, written in the IPA. In Greenlandic, it represents as the result of an assimilation of a consonant cluster with a uvular consonant as the first component. is used in Inuktitut for . represents the retroflex nasal in Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara (see transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages), as well in Norwegian and Swedish. In Greenlandic, it represents . In Inuktitut, it represents . is used in Greenlandic for as the result of an assimilation of a consonant cluster with a uvular consonant as the first component. is used in English for . It normally appears in words of
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
or Romance origin, and in words of ancient Greek origin. It is quite a common digraph. Some words with are relatively recent loanwords from other languages; examples include '' burro'' from Spanish. It is often used in impromptu pronunciation guides to denote either an alveolar tap or an alveolar trill. It is a letter in the Albanian alphabet. In several European languages, such as Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque or Albanian, "rr" represents the alveolar trill (or the voiced uvular fricative in Portuguese) and contrasts with the single "r", which represents the alveolar tap (in Catalan and Spanish a single "r" also represents the alveolar trill at the beginning of words or syllables). In Italian and Finnish, "rr" is a geminated (long) consonant . In Central Alaskan Yup'ik it is used for . In Cornish, it can represent either , , or . In
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 ...
, it represents . was equivalent to and stood for (modern '' ř'') in medieval Czech. In Greenlandic, it represents as the result of an assimilation of a consonant cluster with a uvular consonant as the first component. In Norwegian and Swedish, it represents the voiceless retroflex fricative, . is used in Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, as well in Norwegian and Swedish, for a retroflex stop . In
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 ...
it often represents when broad, or when slender, though this epenthetic consonant is not found in all dialects. is used for in Arrernte. is used in Polish and Kashubian for a voiced retroflex fricative , similar to English as in ''Zhivago''. Examples from Polish are "March" and "river". represents the same sound as , but they have a different origin. used to be pronounced the same way as Czech () in older Polish, but the sounds merged, and the orthography still follows etymology. When preceded by a voiceless consonant () or end of a word, devoices to , as in "before".


S

is used in Italian for before the front vowel letters . It is used for in Catalan, Latin American Spanish, French, English, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese (e.g. French/English ''reminiscence'', Spanish , Brazilian Portuguese , Catalan , Occitan ); in European Portuguese this changed to in the early 20th century, although in careful speech it can be . However, it represents in modern pronunciations of ''crescent'' in British and non- Canadian Commonwealth English. In
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 ...
it usually represented . is used in French for in a few verb forms such as simple past . It is also used in Portuguese as in the imperative/conjunctive form of verbs ending with : . Still pronounced in
Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
, in
European Portuguese European Portuguese (, ), also known as Lusitanian Portuguese () or as the Portuguese (language) of Portugal (), refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portugues ...
this changed to in the early 20th century, although in careful speech it can be . is used in Piedmontese and Corsican for . is used in several languages. In English, it represents . See separate article. See also below, which has the capitalized forms SH and ŞH. is used in English for in words such as ''fusion'' (see yod-coalescence). In Polish, it represents whenever it precedes a vowel, and whenever it precedes a consonant (or at the end of the word), and is considered a graphic variant of appearing in other situations. In Welsh is used for the sound as in ('chocolate'). is used Swedish to write the ''sje'' sound (see also ) and in Faroese, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch to write
Voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech, spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound #Voiceless palato-alveolar frica ...
. is used in Swedish to write the ''sje'' sound . It takes by rule this sound value before the front vowels () word or root initially (as in (spoon)), while normally representing in other positions. In Norwegian and Faroese, it is used to write
voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech, spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound #Voiceless palato-alveolar frica ...
(only in front of ). is used in Iraqw and Bouyei to write the lateral fricative . ( is used in the French tradition to transcribe in other languages as well, as in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages.) is used in German for as in instead of using . is used in Kosraean for . In northern dialects of
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 ...
it represents , as in . is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi. For its use in the Wade–Giles system of Romanization of Chinese, see Wade–Giles → Syllabic consonants. In English, typically represents in the first of ''possess'' and its derivatives ''possessed'', ''possesses'', ''possession'', ''possessive'' and ''possessor'', ''brassiere'', ''dessert'', ''dissolution'' and its derivatives ''dissolved'', ''dissolves'' and ''dissolving'', '' Missoula ( County)'', ''
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
(an)'', ''scissors'', and pronunciations of '' Aussie'' outside the United States; otherwise, it represents . In other languages, such as Catalan, Cornish, French, German, Italian, Occitan, Portuguese and Central Alaskan Yup'ik, where transcribes between vowels (and elsewhere in the case of Yup'ik), is used for in that position ( in Italian and also in some cases in Cornish); English sometimes also follows this convention. In romanized Korean, it represents the fortis sound . In Cypriot Arabic it is used for . Also to note, there are spellings of words with as opposed to them with just one , varied in different types of English. For the word ''focus'', in British English the 3rd person singular, the past participle and the present participle are spelled with (i.e. ''focusses'', ''focussed'' and ''focussing'') whereas in American English and usually Canadian and Australian English they are spelled with one (i.e. ''focuses'', ''focused'' and ''focusing''). is used in German for as in instead of using (or ). In some parts of northern Germany, the pronunciation (as in English) is still quite common in the local dialect. is used in Shona to write the whistled sibilant . This was written from 1931 to 1955. is used in Nambikwara for a glottalized , and in Esperanto orthography it is an unofficial surrogate of , that represents . represents in Malay and Tagalog. is used in several languages. See article. and are used in Piedmontese for the sequence . and are used in Piedmontese for the sequence .


T

is used in Nuxalk for . is used for the palatal click in Naro, and to write the affricate in Sandawe, Hadza and Juǀʼhoan. is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the voiceless dental affricate is used for in Naro. In Catalan, it represents . In Romansh orthographies it represents the Alveolo-palatal consonant . is used in several languages. In English, it can represent , or . See article. See also: Pronunciation of English th. , before a vowel, is usually pronounced in French and in German and is commonly in English, especially in the suffix '' -tion''. is used in Norwegian and Faroese words like / ('tar') for (Norwegian) and (Faroese). In the closely related
Swedish alphabet The Swedish alphabet () is a basic element of the Latin writing system used for the Swedish language. The 29 letters of this alphabet are the modern 26-letter basic Latin alphabet ( to ) plus , , and , in that order. It contains 20 consonants a ...
, it represents , as in . It is also the standard written form of the sound in Dutch and was likewise used in Dutch-based orthographies that used to apply for languages in Indonesia and Surinam. In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte, and Pitjantjatjara, it represents a postalveolar stop, transcribed in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
as or depending on voicing. This sound is also written , , , , or . In Catalan it represents . In Juǀʼhoan it is used for the ejective affricate . is used in Juǀʼhoan for the uvularized ejective . is used in various orthographies for the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate . In Catalan it represents , although it may be simplify to in some dialects. is used in the transcription of Athabascan languages for a lateral affricate or . is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated and nasally released . In Catalan, it is used to represent , that can result not geminated as well, , as in (pronounced in standard Catalan and in Valencian). is used for a prestopped nasal in Arrernte, and for the similar in Yélî Dnye. In Catalan it represents , although it may be simplify to in some dialects. is used in Yélî Dnye for doubly articulated . generally represents a sound like a retroflex version of English "ch" in areas of German influence, such as ''Truk'' lagoon, now spelled . For instance, in Malagasy it represents . In southern dialects of Vietnamese, represents a voiceless retroflex affricate . In the northern dialects, this sound is pronounced , just like what represents. was formerly considered a distinct letter of the Vietnamese alphabet, but today is not. is used in the Basque, where it represents an apical voiceless alveolar affricate . It contrasts with , which is laminal . It is mainly used to Latinize the letter Tse (Cyrillic) (ц) In Hausa, represents an alveolar ejective fricative or affricate ), depending on dialect. It is considered a distinct letter, and placed between and in alphabetical order. It is also used in Catalan for . It is also used in Hausa Boko. In central-western Asturian it's used for . The Wade-Giles and Yale romanizations of Chinese use for an unaspirated voiceless alveolar affricate . Wade–Giles also uses for the aspirated equivalent . These are equivalent to Pinyin and , respectively. The Hepburn romanization of Japanese uses for a voiceless alveolar affricate ). In native Japanese words, this sound only occurs before , but it may occur before other vowels in loanwords. Other romanization systems write as . in Tagalog is used for . The sequence occurs in English, but it has no special function and simply represents a sequence of and . It occurs word-initially only in some loanwords, such as '' tsunami'' and '' tsar''. Most English-speakers do not pronounce a in such words and pronounce them as if they were spelled and or , respectively. was used in medieval Basque and in Azkue's Basque dictionary for a voiceless postalveolar affricate ; this is now represented by . is used in Basque for , and in romanized Kabyle for . In romanized Korean, it represents the fortis sound , in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) it is ejective , and in Cypriot Arabic, it represents . is used for in Arrernte. is used in Basque, Catalan and some indigenous languages of South America, for a voiceless postalveolar affricate . In Nambikwara it represents a glottalized . In Juǀʼhoan it is used for the uvularized-release . is used in the Hungarian alphabet for , a voiceless palatal affricate; in Hungarian, digraphs are considered single letters, and acronyms keep them intact. In Xhosa, represents and the similar in the Algonquian Massachusett orthography. In Shona, it represents . In Tagalog it represents . In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, and Arrernte, it represents a postalveolar stop, either voiceless or voiced . (This sound is also written , , , , and ). In Cypriot Arabic, it represents . is used in Basque, German and
Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
for the voiceless alveolar affricate ). In Basque, this sound is laminal and contrasts with the apical affricate represented by . It is also used in Catalan to represent the voiced alveolar affricate . In Juǀʼhoan it is used for the ejective affricate . For its use in the Wade–Giles system of Romanization of Chinese, see Wade–Giles → Syllabic consonants.


U

is used in Taa for the glottalized or creaky vowel . is used in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and the Romanized Popular Alphabet used to write Hmong, to represent the diphthong . is used in
Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
for before a consonant. Before a vowel, is used. is found in many languages. In English, it represents or as in ''cue'' or ''true'', respectively. In German, it is or (equivalent to ), appearing mainly in proper nouns. In Cantonese Romanisation, it represents in a non-initial position. is used in Afrikaans to represent . is used in Central Alaskan Yup'ik for . is used in Taa for the breathy or murmured vowel . In
Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
, it is used for before a consonant. Before a vowel, is used. is used in Dutch for the diphthong . In Irish, it is after a broad ( velarized) consonant. In
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 ...
it normally represents , however before or before preceding a vowel, it represents , and before or before word-finally or pre-consonant, it represents . In German, it represents the diphthong , which appears only in interjections such as ''. In Mandarin pinyin, it is used for after a consonant (spelt in the initial position). In Cantonese Romanisation, it represents or . In Scots orthography, Scots it represents , e.g. "blood", "done", "moon" and "spoon". In English, when used as a digraph, it represents in ''fruit'', ''juice'', ''suit'' and ''pursuit''. However, after , the functions as a modifier (marking as rather than ), e.g. ''guild'', ''guilty'', ''sanguine'', ''Guinea'', ''guide'' etc.), it is also used for other sounds, in cases of unusual etymological spelling, e.g. ''circuit'', ''biscuit'', ''build''. In Portuguese, it represents the diphthong , as in "intention" or "to care", but in a very small selective group of words that come from Latin "much", it represents a nasalized , as in "very" or "much". was used in old Portuguese for , which in some dialects gets reduced to was used in old Portuguese for is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in Irish for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in Scottish Gaelic for between a broad and a slender consonant. is used in Portuguese for , and in French to write (only before a consonant and at the end of a word). is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in many languages for a nasal vowel. In Portuguese before a consonant, and in many
West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...
n languages, it is , while in French it is , or among the younger generation . In pinyin, is spelled after a consonant, initially. is used in Portuguese for before a consonant. is used in Tibetan Pinyin for . is used in Lakhota for the nasal vowel . is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi, where stands for . is used in Taa, for the pharyngealized vowel . is used in Central Alaskan Yup'ik for , and in Pinyin to write the trill consonant, trilled vowel in languages such as Yi. is used in many languages with phonemic long vowels, for . In Dutch, it is used for . is used in Dutch for , e.g. "yours", "to push". In Cornish it is used for or . is used in Afrikaans for . is X-sistemo, unofficially used in
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
, instead of , for . (a split digraph) is used in English for or .


V

is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the labiodental flap . was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless palatal click . represents in Shona. It was also used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the aspirated consonant, aspirated palatal click . was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless palatal click (equivalent to ). was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the palatal nasal click . is used in Central Alaskan Yup'ik for . is used in Quechuan languages, Quechua.


W

is used in English to represent Proto-Germanic , the continuation of the PIE Labialized velar consonant, labiovelar (which became in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
and the Romance languages). Most English question words begin with this digraph, hence the terms ''wh-word'' and ''wh-question''. In Old English, was spelled or , and only the former was retained during the
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 ...
period, becoming during the gradual development of the letter during the 14th-17th centuries. In most dialects it is now pronounced , but a distinct pronunciation realized as a voiceless labio-velar approximant, voiceless w sound, [ʍ], is retained in some areas: Scotland, central and southern Ireland, southeastern United States, and (mostly among older speakers) in New Zealand. In a few words (''who'', ''whose'', etc.) the pronunciation used among almost all speakers regardless of geography is . For details, see Pronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩.
In Māori, represents or more commonly , with some regional variations approaching or . In the Taranaki Region, Taranaki region, for some speakers, this represents a glottalized . In Xhosa, it represents , a murmured variant of found in loan words. In Cornish, it represents . is used in English for words which formerly began , now Phonological history of English consonant clusters#wr, reduced to /r/ in virtually all dialects. is used in Mandarin pinyin to write the vowel in initial position, as in the name ''Wuhan''. It is sometimes found with this value in Romanized Korean as well, as in hanwu. In Cantonese Romanisation, it is used to represent in an initial position or in a non-initial position. is used in Haida (Bringhurst orthography) for glottalized . is used in Nambikwara for a glottalized .


X

is used etymologically in Portuguese for before the front vowel letters . is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the labialized fricative . is used to write the click in Naro. It was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless lateral click . is used in Albanian to write the voiced postalveolar affricate , as in the surname . In Zulu and Xhosa it represents the aspiration (phonetics), voiceless aspirated alveolar lateral click , e.g. . In Walloon it represents a consonant that is variously , , , depending on the dialect. In Canadian Tlingit it represents , which is represented by in Alaska. is used in English for in words such as ''flexion''. (It is equivalent to plus the digraph , as in ''action''.) was used in the Tindall orthography of Khoekhoe for the voiceless lateral click (equivalent to ). is used as a letter of the Seri alphabet, where it represents a labialized voiceless uvular fricative, uvular fricative, . It is placed between and in alphabetical order. is used etymologically in Portuguese. In the word in
Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
, it stands for . In
European Portuguese European Portuguese (, ), also known as Lusitanian Portuguese () or as the Portuguese (language) of Portugal (), refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portugues ...
this digraph changed to in the early 20th century and the word came to be pronounced as was used in the Ossete Latin alphabet for . is used in the Kurdish language, Kurdish and the Tlingit language for . is used in Alaskan Tlingit for , which in Canada is written . is used in Hadza for the glottalized click , and in Cypriot Arabic for . is used in the Hmong Romanized Popular Alphabet to write .


Y

used in various languages. In English it represents word finally, e.g. ''bye'' or ''dye''. was used in the pre-1985 orthography of Guinea, for the "ejective y" or Palatalization (sound change), palatalized glottal stop () in Pular (a Fula language) and in Hausa to represent a creaky voiced Voiced palatal approximant, palatal approximant . In the current orthography it is now written . In Xhosa it represents . In a handful of Australian languages, it represents a "dental semivowel". is used in Mandarin pinyin to write when it forms an entire syllable. is used in Yanyuwa language, Yanyuwa for a pre- velar stop, . is used in French to write ( before another vowel), as in "thyme". is used in French to write in some words of Greek origin, such as "syncope". is used in Pinyin to write the trill consonant, trilled vowel in languages such as Yi. is used in romanized Chinese to write the vowel . In Mandarin pinyin it is used for in initial position, whereas in Cantonese Jyutping it is used for in non-initial position. In the Yale romanization of Cantonese and Cantonese Romanisation, it represents in an initial position and in a non-initial position. is used for in Arrernte and for doubly articulated in Yélî Dnye. It is used in Cornish for the diphthongs , , or . in used in Nambikwara for a glottalized . is used in some languages such as Finnish to write the long vowel . In Haida (Bringhurst orthography) it is represents glottalized . Used in some Asturian dialects to represent . (a split digraph) indicates an English Great Vowel Shift, 'long y' (equivalent to ).


Z

represents the voiced postalveolar fricative (), like the in ''pleasure'', in Albanian and in Native American languages, Native American orthographies such as Navajo. It is used for the same sound in some English-language dictionaries, as well as to transliterate the sound when represented by Cyrillic and Persian alphabet, Persian into English, but is rarely seen in English words, appearing primarily in foreign borrowings (e.g. ''muzhik'') and slang (e.g. ''zhoosh''). as a digraph is rare in European languages using the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
; in addition to Albanian it is found in Breton in words that are pronounced with in some dialects and in others. In Hanyu Pinyin, represents the voiceless retroflex affricate . When Malayalam and Tamil language, Tamil are transliterated into the Latin script, represents a retroflex approximant (Malayalam ഴ and Tamil ழ ). in Polish represents whenever it precedes a vowel, and whenever it precedes a consonant (or in the end of the word), and is considered a graphic variant of appearing in other situations. is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the voiced lateral fricative is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is the last (forty-fourth) letter of the Hungarian alphabet. Its name is and represents , a voiced postalveolar fricative, similar to in ''Jacques'' and beside in ''vision''. A few examples are "rose" and "fat". is used in Shona to write the whistled sibilant . This was written from 1931 to 1955. is used in Pinyin for in languages such as Yi. It is also used with that value in romanized Kabyle. In medieval Czech, it stood for . In Hadza it is ejective .


Other

, capital , is used in many
West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...
n languages for the nasal vowel . is an "Latin epsilon, open e". , capital , is used in many West African languages for the nasal vowel . is an "open o". , capital , is used in French for the vowels and . The first element of the digraph, , is itself is a ligature (writing), ligature of and , and may also be written as the trigraph . is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for . is used in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages for the labial-velar nasal . , capital , was used for in the old orthography of Zhuang and Bouyei; this is now spelled with the trigraph . is used in Adzera for the prenasalized glottal stop . , capital or sometimes , was a digraph used in the Slovene Bohorič alphabet for . The first element, , the long s, is an archaic non-final form of the letter . are used in Juǀʼhoan for its four glottalized nasal clicks, . are used in Khoekhoe for its four tenuis click consonant, clicks, . are used in Khoekhoe for its four aspirated nasal clicks, , and in Juǀʼhoan for its plain aspirated clicks, . are used in Juǀʼhoan for its four affricate ejective-contour clicks, . are used in Khoekhoe for its four plain nasal clicks, . are used in Juǀʼhoan for its four affricate pulmonic-contour clicks, . was used in Yañalif and some Turkic languages for the diphthong .


See also

* Trigraph (orthography), Trigraph ** List of Latin-script trigraphs * Tetragraph ** List of Latin-script tetragraphs * Pentagraph ** List of Latin-script pentagraphs * Hexagraph * Heptagraph * List of Latin letters * List of Cyrillic digraphs


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Latin Digraphs Latin-script digraphs,