| Digraph (orthography) |
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A digraph, '''bigraph''' or '''digram''' is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound) or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the two characters in sequence. The sound is often, but not necessarily, one which cannot be expressed using a single character in the Orthography used by the language. Normally, the term "digraph" is reserved for Grapheme s whose pronunciation is always or nearly always the same. When digraphs do not represent a special sound, they may be relics from an earlier period of the language when they did have a different pronunciation, or represent a distinction which is made only in certain dialects, like ''wh'' in English . They may also be used for purely Etymological reasons, like ''rh'' in English. In some languages, digraphs are considered individual Letter s, meaning that they have their own place in the alphabet, in the standard orthography, and cannot be separated into their constituent graphemes; e.g.: when sorting, abbreviating or hyphenating. In others, like English, this is not the case. Some schemes of Romanization make extensive use of digraphs (e.g. Cyrillic to Roman for English readers), while others rely solely on Diacritic s (e.g. Cyrillic to The Modified Roman used for Turkish ). To avoid ambiguity, transliteration based on diacritics is generally preferred in academic circles. Many languages, like Serbian and Turkish , have no digraphs, and so transliterations into these languages also cannot use digraphs. TYPES OF DIGRAPHS There are two main kinds of digraphs, sequences and double letters. Sequences This is a pair of different letters in a specific order. Examples in English are:
Digraphs may also be composed of vowels. Common examples in English are:
For further information on English, see English Orthography . In Dutch , the digraph '' Ij '', which often resembles a ''y'' in handwriting, represents the Diphthong . Opinions are divided on whether it should be considered part of the alphabet. Double letters These are pairs of identical letters that have a special pronunciation. In some languages they indicate Consonant Length or Vowel Length , a Stressed Syllable or a new sound, but in other cases they are just part of the spelling convention. ''Ll'' is the most common in English, though it does not represent a different sound from ''l'', being essentially an etymological digraph. In Welsh , however, it stands for a voiceless lateral, and in Spanish it stands for a palatal consonant. '' Ee '' and '' Oo '' are common English digraphs made up of vowels. Some more examples:
Ambiguity Some letter pairs should not be interpreted as digraphs, but appear due to Compounding , like in ''hogshead'' and ''cooperate''. This is often not marked in any way (it is an exception which must simply be memorized), but some authors indicate it either by breaking up the digraph with a Hyphen , as in ''hogs-head'', ''co-operate'', or with a Diaeresis Mark , as in ''coöperate'', though this usage is rare In English . In Czech also (and analogically in other Slavic Languages ), double letters may appear in compound words, but they are not considered digraphs. Examples: ''bezzubý'' (''bez'' + ''zubý'', toothless), ''cenný'' (''cen'' + ''ný'', valuable), ''černooký'' (''černo'' + ''oký'', black-eyed). DIGRAPHS VERSUS LETTERS In some languages, digraphs and Trigraph s are counted as distinct letters in themselves, and assigned to a specific place in the alphabet, separate from that of the sequence of characters which composes them, in Orthography or Collation . Other languages, such as English, make no such convention, and split digraphs into their constituent letters for collation purposes. Some language alphabets that include digraphs are:
IN NON-LATIN ALPHABETS Digraphs also exist in languages that are not written with the Latin Alphabet . For example, Modern Greek has the following:
SEE ALSO
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