This is a list of tetragraphs in the Latin script. These are most common in Irish orthography. For Cyrillic tetragraphs, see tetragraph.
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/.
The majority of English tetragraphs make vowel sounds:
There are four examples of vowel tetragraphs that are found only in proper nouns:
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:
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).
⟨illi⟩ is pronounced [j] in words such as joaillier and quincaillier (which can also be written as joailler and quincailler since 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.
⟨dsch⟩ represents [ d͡ʒ ] in loanwords such as Dschungel ("jungle"), Aserbaidschan ("Azerbaijan"), Tadschikistan ("Tajikistan"), Kambodscha ("Cambodia"), and Dschingis Khan ("Genghis Khan").
⟨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").
⟨zsch⟩ represents [ t͡ʃ ] in a few German names such as Zschopau and Zschorlau.
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.
⟨ndlh⟩ represents /ndˡʱ/.
⟨nplh⟩ represents /mbˡʱ/.
⟨ntsh⟩ represents /ɳɖʐʱ/.
⟨ntxh⟩ represents /ndzʱ/.
Between two broad velarized consonants:
Between two slender (palatalized) consonants:
Between a broad and a slender consonant:
Between a slender and a broad consonant:
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 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/.
⟨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 ⟩.
⟨tth’⟩ is used in various Northern Athabaskan languages for [t̪͡θʼ], the dental ejective affricate.
A caron is a diacritic mark commonly placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation.
A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond to the language's phonemes. 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; it was once mostly phonemic during the Middle English stage, when the modern spellings originated, but spoken English changed rapidly while the orthography was much more stable, resulting in the modern nonphonemic situation. On the contrary the Albanian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, Romanian, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Finnish, Czech, Latvian, Esperanto, Korean and Swahili orthographic systems come much closer to being consistent phonemic representations.
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 21 letters of the 26-letter Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect, and not the other Italian dialects.
Since the early 16th century, Nahuatl has been written in an orthography in Latin script based on Spanish spelling conventions, with overall the same values for letters in both orthographies. Over the centuries, Latin script was utilized to record a large body of Nahuatl prose and poetry, which somewhat mitigated the devastating loss of the thousands of Aztec manuscripts that were burned by Spanish missionaries.
The letter Ъ ъ of the Cyrillic script is known as er goläm 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, Japanese, 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.
The modern Latvian orthography is based on Latin script adapted to phonetic principles, following the pronunciation of the language. The standard alphabet consists of 33 letters – 22 unmodified Latin letters and 11 modified by diacritics. It was developed by the Knowledge Commission of the Riga Latvian Association in 1908, and was approved the same year by the orthography commission under the leadership of Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns. It was introduced by law from 1920 to 1922 in the Republic of Latvia.
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 hexagraph is a sequence of six letters used to represent a single sound (phoneme), or a combination of sounds that do not correspond to the individual values of the letters. They occur in Irish orthography, and many of them can be analysed as a tetragraph followed by the vowels ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ on either side to indicate that the neighbouring consonants are palatalized ("slender"). However, not all Irish hexagraphs are analysable that way. The hexagraph ⟨oidhea⟩, for example, represents the same sound as the trigraph adh, and with the same effect on neighboring consonants.
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.
The Van Ophuijsen Spelling System was the Romanized standard orthography for the Indonesian language from 1901 to 1947. Before the Van Ophuijsen Spelling System was in force, the Malay language in the Dutch East Indies did not have a standardized spelling, or was written in the Jawi script. In 1947, the Van Ophuijsen Spelling System was replaced by the Republican Spelling System.