A tetragraph, , is a sequence of four letters used to represent a single sound (
phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
), or a combination of sounds, that do not necessarily correspond to the individual values of the letters.
In German, for example, the tetragraph ''tsch'' represents the sound of the English
digraph ''ch''. English does not have tetragraphs in native words (the closest is perhaps the sequence ''
-ough'' in words like ''through''), but ''chth'' and ''phth'' are true tetragraphs when found initially in words of Greek origin such as ''
chthonic'' and ''
phthisis''.
Phonemes spelled with multiple characters often indicate that either the phoneme or the script is alien to the language. For example, the
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 ...
alphabets adapted to the
Caucasian languages, which are phonologically very different from Russian, make extensive use of digraphs, trigraphs, and even a tetragraph in
Kabardian for . The
Romanized Popular Alphabet created for the
Hmong languages includes three tetragraphs: ''nplh, ntsh,'' and ''ntxh,'' which represent complex consonants.
List of tetragraphs
Latin script
Cyrillic script
In
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 ...
used for
languages of the Caucasus, there are tetragraphs as doubled digraphs used for 'strong' consonants (typically transcribed in the IPA as geminate), and also labialized homologues of trigraphs.
is used in
Kabardian for , the labialized homologue of , in turn unpredictably derived from ejective .
is used in
Avar for , the 'strong' homologue of , the ejective () homologue of . It is often substituted with .
is used in Avar for . It is often substituted with .
is used in Avar for . It is often substituted with .
is used in
Archi for
is used in Archi for
is used in Archi for
is used in Archi for
is used in Archi for
is used in Archi for
is used in Archi for
Canadian syllabics
Inuktitut syllabics has a series of trigraphs for ''ŋ'' followed by a vowel. For geminate ''ŋŋ'', these are form tetragraphs with ''n'':
:ᙱ ''ŋŋi'', ᙳ ''ŋŋu'', ᙵ ''ŋŋa''
These are literally ''nnggi, nnggu, nngga''.
See also
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Digraph (orthography)
A digraph () or digram is a pair of character (symbol), characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two char ...
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Trigraph (orthography)
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Pentagraph
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Hexagraph
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Heptagraph
A heptagraph (from the , and , ) is a sequence of seven letters used to represent a single sound (phoneme), or a combination of sounds, that do not correspond to the individual values of the letters.
Heptagraphs are extremely rare. Most other f ...
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Multigraph (orthography)
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List of Cyrillic letters
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Unigraph (orthography)
References
{{reflist
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