Talk:Trigraph (orthography)

Diphthongs

It seems debatable if a diphthong is one sound. By IPA rules they are indicated by two symbols. So the mentioned trigraph "igh" is not a good example. It does not use three letters to represent one sound−Woodstone 18:07, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

It is one sound phonologically, just as an affricate is. It's arguable whether ay for /ai/ or tš for /tʃ/ are digraphs (I don't know whether they technically count or not), but ie for /ai/ and ch for /tʃ/ do count. The same thing applies for trigraphs. You might want to argue that igh is the vowel i followed by a silent gh, but since night is not pronounced nit, I don't know if this is viable. kwami (talk) 23:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Scr, Tch

Is 'scratch' a trigraph? The 'scr' being the possible trigraph. What about the 'tch' at the end is that one too?

"Scr" is one sound but 3 phonemes, so I don't THINK that would work, but I'm no linguist. I do think the "tch" would work.

—Cameron Nedland

Agreed. A trigraph is not analyzable. scr /skr/ = s /s/ + c /k/ + r /r/. But you can't analyze tch as t + c + h or even t + ch. kwami (talk) 23:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Why can't you can analyze "tch" as "t + ch"? 71.174.188.111 (talk) 00:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Quadragraph

If no one objects, I'm thinking about making a Quadragrph article.Cameron Nedland 02:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Tetragraphs??

Digraphs and trigraphs are quite common, but do you know of any tetragraphs in any languages?? Georgia guy 01:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

In French there are lots of tetragraphs, caused by verb endings. In ils disent (they say) the ent is silent, forming a tretragraph sent representing [z]. In the past tense this becomes ils disaient where the pentagraph aient is pronounced [ɛ]. −Woodstone 10:09, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that's better analyzed as a series of silent letters. You don't spell /zut/ "sentout". There are so few tetragraphs and pentagraphs, however, that it may be best to cover them here. kwami (talk) 23:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Swahili ng'

Swahili ng' is considered a digraph or a trigraph? Why it isn't neither in digraph nor in trigraph articles? --81.38.182.40 (talk) 22:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added it to the template under trigraph. However, please correct me if I'm wrong: since the apostrophe is not a letter in Swahili (unlike, say, Hawaiian), I don't think ng’ is technically a trigraph. But I'm not going to worry about it for now. kwami (talk) 23:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

sch

is also Swedish, same value as in German. 92.224.97.92 (talk) 16:14, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Note: German <sch> is pronounced /ʃ/ while Swedish <sch> is pronounced /ɧ/. — Knyȝt (talk) 22:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

to do

Juǀʼhoansi

ds’ ts’ dšh tšh dš’ tš’ kx’ tx’

was used in the 1975 orthography of Juǀʼhoansi for [].

’gh ds’ ts’ djh tjh dj’ tj’ tg’ tsg djg tjg dch c’h nch dcg cg’ dqh q’h nqh dqg cq’ dçh ç’h nçh dçg çg’ x’h nxh dxg cx’

was used in the 1987 orthography of Juǀʼhoansi for [].

dsh tsh dch tch dzx tsx djx tcx aqn oqn

(1994)

— kwami (talk) 12:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)