GH
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 Gaelic, 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) - 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 phonemes). 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 come before 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). In other words the digraph merely represents a hard g, Germanic at the beginning of a word, as in ghôst, ghoûl, ghāstly, or in Italian 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).