GH

From Citizendium
Revision as of 08:34, 18 February 2010 by imported>Ro Thorpe
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

GH, gh is a digraph (a two-letter grapheme) used with various different values in a number of languages using the Latin alphabet, especially in English, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Italian, Romanian, Friulian and Corsican.

Use in English

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list  
Common misspellings  

gh in English is a notorious digraph, representing as it usually does the sorry relic of a sound (IPA χ) no longer pronounced except in exclamations of disgust, úgh! yeùgh! (also found as Scottish ch in lóch, which in Ireland is indeed spelt lóugh; another Irish example is Drógheda) - or mutated into the sound of f and ph.

nîght and cóugh, for example, are pronounced *nîte and *cóff (the accents show pronunciation: see English spellings). It is pronounced 'f' in: cóugh, tróugh, Góugh, enoúgh, toúgh, roúgh, sloúgh skin.

More often, as in nîght, gh is silent, and quite a variety of vowel sounds and spellings can precede it: ŏught, sŏught, bŏught, cåught, nåughty, Våughan, Våughn, dôugh, èight, nèigh, wèigh, slèigh ride (= slây kill), wèight heavy (= wâit time), frèight, heîght, bòugh, throûgh, thôugh, Búrrôughs, sîght, nîght, nîgh, slòugh swamp and the English town Slòugh, both *slòu.

ough is even a schwa (ə) in British English bòrough, Scàrborough and thòrough, though in American these are bòrôugh, Scàrborôugh, and thòrôugh, rhyming with fúrrôw. BrE pronounces fürlôugh this way too.

gh uniquely sounds like p in híccoúgh (a variant spelling of híccup). Initially the digraph merely represents a hard g, as in ghôst, ghoûl, ghāstly, spaghéttì; and an h serves to distinguish dínghy boat (which can have hard g or silent g, but always the ng sound) from díngy dirty (soft g: *dínjy).

See also