Tetragraphs in Arrernte transcribe single consonants, but are largely predictable from their components.
⟨kngw⟩ represents /ᵏŋʷ/.
⟨rtnw⟩ represents /ʈɳʷ/.
⟨thnw⟩ and ⟨tnhw⟩ represent /ᵗ̪n̪ʷ/.
⟨tnyw⟩ represents /ᶜɲʷ/.
English
"Shch" redirects here. For the Cyrillic letter, see Shcha.
The majority of English tetragraphs make vowel sounds:
⟨aigh⟩ represents /eɪ/, as in straight.
⟨aire⟩ represents /ɛː/ in Received Pronunciation (RP), as in millionaire.
⟨arre⟩ can represent /ɑː/ in RP, as in bizarre.
⟨arrh⟩ represents /ɑː/ in RP, as in catarrh.
⟨augh⟩ can represent /ɔː/, as in caught.
⟨ayer⟩ can represent /ɛː/ in RP, as in prayer.
⟨ayor⟩ represents /ɛː/ in RP, as in mayor.
⟨eigh⟩ can represent three different sounds: /eɪ/ as in weigh, /aɪ/ as in height, and /iː/ as in Leigh.
⟨ough⟩ has ten possible pronunciations, five of which make vowel sounds: /aʊ/ as in drought,/ɔː/ as in bought,/oʊ/ as in though,/uː/ as in through, and /ə/ as in thorough.
⟨ueue⟩ represents /juː/, as in queue.
⟨yrrh⟩ represents /ɜː/ in RP, as in myrrh.
There are four examples of vowel tetragraphs that are found only in proper nouns:
⟨eare⟩ represents /ɪə/ in RP, as found in Shakespeare.
⟨orce⟩ represents /ʊ/ in RP, as found in Worcestershire.
Three consonant tetragraphs exist in English that are more commonly sounded as two separate digraphs. However, when used in word-initial position they become one single sound:
⟨chth⟩ at the start of a word represents /θ/, as in chthonian.
⟨phth⟩ at the start of a word represents /θ/, as in phthisis.
⟨shch⟩ at the start of word represents /ʃ/ as in shcherbakovite, a mineral named after Russian geochemist and mineralogist, Dmitri Ivanovich Shcherbakov[ru].[1] It is used as the transcription of the Cyrillic letter Щ and usually read as two separate digraphs, /ʃ.t͡ʃ/ as in pushchairs or /s.t͡ʃ/ as in Pechishche, a place name in Belarus.[2]
In word-final position, the French tetragraph ⟨cque⟩ is sometimes used for /k/ in some loan words, such as sacque (an old spelling of sack).
The tetragraph sthm (/s͡θ͜m/) is only used in the word isthmus.
French
⟨illi⟩ is pronounced [j] in words such as joaillier and quincaillier (which can also be written as joailler and quincaillersince 1990).
Additionally, trigraphs are sometimes followed by silent letters, and these sequences may be considered with tetragraphs:
⟨cque⟩ is pronounced [k] in words such as grecque and Mecque, where the trigraph ⟨cqu⟩ is followed by the feminine suffix -e.
⟨eaux⟩ represents [o] when the silent plural suffix -x is added to the trigraph ⟨eau⟩; e.g., oiseaux.
German
"dsch" redirects here. For the musical motif, see DSCH motif.
⟨tsch⟩ represents [t͡ʃ], which is a relatively common phoneme in German, appearing in words like deutsch ("German"), Deutschland ("Germany"), Tschechien ("Czech Republic"), and tschüss ("bye").
There are several Halkomelem alphabets. The Cowichan alphabet includes the tetragraph ⟨tthʼ⟩ for the sound /t͜θʼ/. (ʼ is a letter of the alphabet, so tthʼ is made up of four letters.)
Hmong
There are several sequences of four letters in the Romanized Popular Alphabet that transcribe what may be single consonants, depending on the analysis. However, their pronunciations are predictable from their components. All begin with the ⟨n⟩ of prenasalization, and end with the ⟨h⟩ of aspiration. Between these is a digraph, one of ⟨dl⟩/tˡ/, ⟨pl⟩/pˡ/, ⟨ts⟩/ʈ͡ʂ/, or ⟨tx⟩/t͡s/, which may itself be predictable.
⟨eadh⟩ represents /əi̯/ (/eː/ in Donegal) and when unstressed word finally /ə/ (/uː/ in Mayo and Donegal).
⟨eamh⟩ represents /əu̯/ and when unstressed word finally /uː/ in Mayo and Donegal.
Juǀʼhoan
The apostrophe was used with four trigraphs for click consonants in the 1987 orthography of Juǀʼhoan. The apostrophe is considered a diacritic rather than a letter in Juǀʼhoan.
⟨dcgʼ⟩ for [ᶢǀʢ]
⟨dçgʼ⟩ for [ᶢǂʢ]
⟨dqgʼ⟩ for [ᶢǃʢ]
⟨dxgʼ⟩ for [ᶢǁʢ]
Piedmontese
Piedmontese does not have tetragraphs. A hyphen may separate ⟨s⟩ from ⟨c⟩ or ⟨g⟩, when these would otherwise be read as single sounds.
⟨s-c⟩ and ⟨s-cc⟩ represent /stʃ/, to avoid confusion with the digraph ⟨sc⟩ for /ʃ/.
⟨s-g⟩ and ⟨s-gg⟩ are similarly used to represent /zdʒ/.
Others
⟨eeuw⟩ and ⟨ieuw⟩ are used in Dutch for the sounds [eːu̯] and [iːu̯], as in sneeuw, "snow" and nieuw, "new". ⟨Uw⟩ alone stands for [yːu̯], so these sequences are not predictable.
⟨gqxʼ⟩ is used in the practical orthography of the Taa language, where it represents the prevoiced affricate [ɢqχʼ].
⟨ngʼw⟩ is used for [ŋʷ] in Swahili-based alphabets. However, the apostrophe is a diacritic in Swahili, not a letter, so this is not a true tetragraph.
⟨nyng⟩ is used in Yanyuwa to write a pre-velar nasal, [ŋ̟].
⟨s-ch⟩ is used in the Puter orthographic variety of the Romansh language (spoken in the Upper Engadin area in Switzerland) for the sequence /ʃtɕ/ (while the similar trigraph ⟨sch⟩ denotes the sounds /ʃ/ and /ʒ/).[3] It is not part of the orthography of Rumantsch Grischun, but is used in place names like S-chanf and in the Puter orthography used locally in schools again since 2011.
⟨thsh⟩ is used in Xhosa to write the sound [tʃʰ]. It is often replaced with the ambiguous trigraph⟨tsh⟩.
A caronKARR-ən. or háček, is a diacritic mark placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term caron, while linguists prefer the Czech word háček.
Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound, the pronunciation of the English ⟨ch⟩ as in "cheese".
A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond consistently to the language's phonemes, or more generally to the language's diaphonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic.
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.
A trigraph is a group of three characters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined.
German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.
Italian orthography uses the Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine variety of Tuscan.
The Catalan and Valencian orthographies encompass the spelling and punctuation of standard Catalan and Valencian. There are also several adapted variants to the peculiarities of local dialects of Insular Catalan.
The letter Ъ ъ of the Cyrillic script is known as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet, as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets, as the debelo jer in pre-reform Serbian orthography, and as ayirish belgisi in the Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet. The letter is called back yer or back jer and yor or jor in the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic, and in Old Church Slavonic.
Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Ladino, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian Latynka, and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such.
C, or c, is the third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee, plural cees.
A tetragraph, from Greek τετρα (tetra) 'four' and γράφω (gráphō) 'write', is a sequence of four letters used to represent a single sound (phoneme), 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, but chth and phth are true tetragraphs when found initially in words of Greek origin such as chthonic and phthisis.
The Cyrillic script family contains many specially treated two-letter combinations, or digraphs, but few of these are used in Slavic languages. In a few alphabets, trigraphs and even the occasional tetragraph or pentagraph are used.
A multigraph is a sequence of letters that behaves as a unit and is not the sum of its parts, such as English ⟨ch⟩ or French ⟨eau⟩. The term is infrequently used, as the number of letters is usually specified:
A heptagraph 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.
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