Digraph (orthography) in the context of Rr (digraph)

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for [h], which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are [p] and [b], pronounced with the lips; [t] and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k] and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced throughout the vocal tract; [f], [v], [s], and [z] pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and [m] and [n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Most consonants are pulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of ejectives, implosives, and clicks. Contrasting with consonants are vowels.

Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs like ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sh⟩, ⟨th⟩, and ⟨ng⟩ are used to extend the alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, the sound spelled ⟨th⟩ in "this" is a different consonant from the ⟨th⟩ sound in "thin". (In the IPA, these are [ð] and [θ], respectively.)

Omega (US: /oʊˈmeɪɡə, -ˈmɛɡə, -ˈmiːɡə/ , UK: /ˈoʊmɪɡə/; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The name of the letter was originally ὦ (ō̂ [ɔ̂ː]), but it was later changed to ὦ μέγα (ō̂ méga 'big o') in the Middle Ages to distinguish it from omicron ⟨ο⟩, whose name means 'small o', as both letters had come to be pronounced [o]. In modern Greek, its name has fused into ωμέγα (oméga).

In phonetic terms, the Ancient Greek Ω represented a long open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔː], in contrast to omicron, which represented the close-mid back rounded vowel [o], and the digraph ⟨ου⟩, which represented the long close back rounded vowel [uː]. In modern Greek, both omega and omicron represent the mid back rounded vowel [o̞]. The letter omega is transliterated into a Latin-script alphabet as ō or simply o.

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, Ladin, 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.

This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. In the list, letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetical order according to their base, e.g. ⟨å⟩ is alphabetised with ⟨a⟩, not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as ⟨ſ⟩ (a variant of ⟨s⟩) and ⟨ɔ⟩ (based on ⟨o⟩), are placed at the end.

Capitalisation only involves the first letter (⟨ch⟩ becomes ⟨Ch⟩) unless otherwise stated (⟨ij⟩ becomes ⟨IJ⟩ in Dutch, and digraphs marking eclipsis in Irish, are capitalised on the second letter, i.e. ⟨mb⟩ becomes ⟨mB⟩).

The romanization of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using the Latin script. Serbian is written in two alphabets; Serbian Cyrillic, a variation of the Cyrillic script, and Gaj's Latin alphabet, or latinica, a variation of the Latin script. Both are widely used in Serbia. The Serbian language is thus an example of digraphia.

The two alphabets are almost directly and completely interchangeable. Romanization can be done with no errors, but, due to the use of digraphs in the Latin script (due to letters "nj" (њ), "lj" (љ), and "dž" (џ)), knowledge of Serbian is sometimes required to do proper transliteration from Latin back to Cyrillic. Standard Serbian currently uses both alphabets. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors Cyrillic; the remaining 17% has no preference.

Omicron (US: /ˈoʊmɪkrɒn, ˈɒmɪkrɒn/ , UK: / oʊˈmaɪkrɒn/; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, Greek: όμικρον) is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel [o] in contrast to omega, which represented the open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔː], and the digraph ⟨ου⟩ which represented the long close back rounded vowel [uː]. In modern Greek, both omicron and omega represent the mid back rounded vowel [o̞]. Letters that arose from omicron include Roman O and Cyrillic O and Ю. The name of the letter was originally οὖ (oû [ûː]), but it was later changed to ὂ μικρόν (ò mikrón 'small o') in the Middle Ages to distinguish the letter from omega ⟨ω⟩, whose name means 'big o', as both letters had come to be pronounced [o]. In modern Greek, its name has fused into όμικρον (ómikron). In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 70.

Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of the Hussite movement, in one of his seminal works, De orthographia bohemica (On Bohemian orthography).

The modern Czech orthographic system is diacritic, having evolved from an earlier system which used many digraphs (although one digraph has been kept - ch). The caron (known as háček in Czech) is added to standard Latin letters to express sounds which are foreign to Latin. The acute accent is used for long vowels.

Diaeresis (/daɪˈɛrəsɪs, -ˈɪər-/ dy-ERR-ə-siss, -⁠EER-) is a diacritical mark consisting of two dots (◌̈) that indicates that two adjacent vowel letters are separate syllables – a vowel hiatus (also called a diaeresis) – rather than a digraph or diphthong.

It consists of a two dots diacritic placed over a letter, generally a vowel.

According to the alphabetic principle, letters and combinations of letters are the symbols used to represent the speech sounds of a language based on systematic and predictable relationships between written letters, symbols, and spoken words. The alphabetic principle is the foundation of any alphabetic writing system (such as the English variety of the Latin alphabet, one of the more common types of writing systems in use today). In the education field, it is known as the alphabetic code.

Alphabetic writing systems that use an (in principle) almost perfectly phonemic orthography have a single letter (or digraph or, occasionally, trigraph) for each individual phoneme and a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and the letters that represent them, although predictable allophonic alternation is normally not shown. Such systems are used, for example, in the modern languages Serbo-Croatian (arguably, an example of perfect phonemic orthography), Macedonian, Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Georgian, Hungarian, Turkish, and Esperanto. The best cases have a straightforward spelling system, enabling a writer to predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation and similarly enabling a reader to predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. Ancient languages with such almost perfectly phonemic writing systems include Avestic, Latin, Vedic, and Sanskrit (Devanāgarī—an abugida; see Vyakarana). On the other hand, French and English have a strong difference between sounds and symbols.

In phonetics and phonology, gemination (/ˌdʒɛmɪˈneɪʃən/ ; from Latin geminatio 'doubling', itself from gemini 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from stress. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a doubled letter and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant. Some phonological theories use 'doubling' as a synonym for gemination, while others describe two distinct phenomena.

Consonant length is a distinctive feature in certain languages, such as Japanese. Other languages, such as Modern Greek, do not have word-internal phonemic consonant geminates.

Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight digraphs) of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords.

The traditional names of the letters are a, bi, èc, èch, di, èdd, e, èf, èff, èg, èng, aets, i, je, èl, èll, èm, èn, o, pi, ffi (yff), èr, rhi, ès, ti, èth, u, w, y. In South Wales, where the letters i and u are pronounced identically, they are distinguished as i-dot and u-bedol (bedol means "horseshoe"). Thus the television channel S4C is pronounced ès pedwar èc. Informally, another way of saying the letters is often used, adding the sound [ɘ] after stop consonants and simply pronouncing the others: a, by, cy, ch, dy, dd, and so on.

Ll/ll is a digraph that occurs in several languages.

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt], S-Z) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character's Unicode names in English are double s, sharp s and eszett. The Eszett letter is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩ if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ss in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.

The letter originated as the ⟨sz⟩ digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩. This developed from an earlier usage of ⟨z⟩ in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as ⟨s⟩; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as ⟨sz⟩ in some situations.