Trigraph (orthography)

A trigraph (from the Greek: τρεῖς, treîs, "three" and γράφω, gráphō, "write") is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined. For example, in the word schilling, the trigraph "sch" represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, rather than the consonant cluster */skh/. In the word beautiful, the sequence eau is pronounced /juː/, and in the French word château it is pronounced /o/. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a sequence of letters in English is a trigraph, because of the complicating role of silent letters. However, tch as in watch and igh as in night (not pronounced nit) may be considered trigraphs.

The trigraph sch is German, where it is equivalent to the English sh; like English sh, is not regarded as an independent letter of the alphabet. In Hungarian, the trigraph dzs is treated as a distinct letter, with its own place in the alphabet. It is prononounced like an English "j" /dʒ/. The combination gli in Italian can also be a trigraph, representing the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ before vowels other than i.

Although trigraphs are not uncommon in adaptations of the Latin alphabet, they are rare elsewhere. Perhaps the only example comes from the Cyrillic alphabet, which uses five trigraphs and a tetragraph when writing the Kabardian language: гъу /ʁʷ/, кӀу /kʷ’/, къу /qʷ’/, кхъ /q/, хъу /χʷ/, and кхъу /qʷ/. While most of these can be thought of as consonant + /w/, the letters in кхъ /q/ cannot be so separated: the х has the negative meaning that кхъ is not ejective. (Къ is /q’/.)

[edit] See also

• Digraph
• List of Latin letters

[edit] References

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