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A digraph or bigraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined. This is often, but not necessarily, a sound (or more precisely a phoneme) which cannot be expressed using a single letter in the alphabet used for writing.

Sometimes, when digraphs do not represent a new phoneme, they are a relic from an earlier period in the language's history when they did (or remain phonemic only in certain dialects, e.g. wh in English).

Some schemes of transliteration into the Roman alphabet make extensive use of digraphs (e.g. Cyrillic to Roman for English readers), while others rely solely on diacritics (e.g. Cyrillic to the modified Roman used for Turkish). To avoid ambiguity, transliteration based on diacritics is generally preferred in academic circles. Many writing systems, like Cyrillic and Devanagari, have no digraphs, and so transliterations into languages using them also cannot use digraphs.

There are three kinds of digraphs: sequences, reversals (really a special kind of sequence) and doubled letters.

Sequences

This is a group of two letters, both of which are different.

Examples from languages include:

  • Modern Greek
    • αι (ai) represents
    • ει (ei) represents
    • οι (oi) represents
    • ου (ou) represents
    • γκ (gk) represents
    • μπ (mp) represents
    • ντ (nt) represents
Some of the above depend on context — see Greek alphabet.

  • Thai (transcription system)
    • kh represents
    • ph represents
    • th represents
    • ng represents

Reversals

Reversals are sequences in which both possible orders of letters are common enough to be digraphs.

  • English
    • re corresponds to
    • le corresponds to

Doubled letters

These have both letters the same. In some languages these indicate length, a stressed syllable or a new sound, and in some cases they are just part of the spelling convention. Ll is the most common in English, though it does not represent a different sound, but that is not the case in other languages; Welsh's ll is a voiceless lateral, and in Spanish it is a palatal lateral approximant or else a palatal fricative. Ee and oo are common examples from English. Rr in Spanish and Italian indicates a trill, and forms a minimal pair with the single r. Italian's zz represents the affricate .

In Czech (and analogically in other Slavic languages) doubled letters occur in word-formation by prefixes and suffixes, and in composite words. Therefore, doubled letters are not considered as digraphs in Czech. Examples:
    • bezzubý (toothless)
    • cenný (valuable)
    • černooký (black-eyed)

See also

Orthography

Digraph | Divc'hrafenn | Spřežkový pravopis | Digraf | Digraph (Linguistik) | Dígrafo | Digramme | Dígrafo | Digramo | Digrafo (ortografia) | Digraaf | 二重音字 | Digraf | Dígrafo | Диграф | Digraf

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Digraph (orthography)".

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