Digraph (orthography)

Categories: Pages containing IPA

Note: This page contains
IPA phonetic symbols
in Unicode.


A digraph or bigraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound. 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.

Contents

[edit]

Sequences

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

Examples from languages include:

See also French phonology and orthography
  • Modern Greek
    • αι (ai), corresponds to [ɛ]
    • ει (ei), corresponds to [i]
    • οι (oi), corresponds to [i]
    • ου (ou), corresponds to [u]
    • γκ (gk), corresponds to [k]
    • μπ (mp), corresponds to [b]
    • ντ (nt), corresponds to [d]

Some of the above depend on context — see Greek alphabet.

  • Polish
    • dz
    • dzi
    • dź
    • dż
    • ch
    • rz
    • sz, as sh in English
  • Portuguese
    • ch, like sh in English
    • lh, similar to ll in Spanish, like lli in English million
    • nh, similar to ñ in Spanish, like ny in English canyon
    • qu, as k in English
    • sc
    • xc
    • ss, provides for silibant s between two vowels, where single s is pronounced like English z
    • rr, throaty r sound in middle of words
  • Spanish
    • ch, corresponds to [tʃ] (voiceless postalveolar affricate)
    • gu, as g in English before e or i. Pronounced /gw/ before a, o and u.
    • gü, corresponds to [gw]. Used only before the letters e and i.
    • ll
    • qu, as k in English. Used only before the letters e and i.
    • rr
[edit]

Reversals

Reversals are sequences in which both possible orders of letters are common enough to be digraphs. This is very common in English, because of the way that contemporary English is derived from Old English (Anglo-Saxon).

  • English
    • re corresponds to [ər]
    • le corresponds to [əl]
[edit]

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 represents no new sound, but that is not the case in other languages; Welsh's ll is a voiceless lateral, and in Spanish it is a palatalized l [ʎ] (Castilian only) or else a palatal fricative. Ee and oo are common examples from English. Rr in Spanish and Portuguese indicates a trill, and forms minimal pairs with the single r. Italian's zz represents the affricate [ʦ].

[edit]

See also

de:Digraph (Linguistik) als:Digraph fr:Digramme gl:Dígrafo io:Digramo nl:Digraaf ja:二重音字 pt:Dígrafo sv:Digraf