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In the dominant dialects of modern English, gh is almost always either silent or pronounced /f/ (see Ough). It is thought that before disappearing, the sound became partially or completely voiced to [ɣx] or [ɣ], which would explain the new spelling — Old English used a simple h — and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.
The sound of a hard g (which often precedes the non-front vowels a o u or a consonant) is usually the voiced velar plosive [ɡ] (as in gain or go) while the sound of a soft g (typically before i , e , or y ) may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language.
To illustrate: gh can only resemble f when following the letters ou or au at the end of certain morphemes ("tough", "cough", "laugh"), while ti would only resemble sh when followed by a vowel sound. The expected pronunciation in English would sound like "goatee" / ˈ ɡ oʊ t i /, not "fish". [1]
ch (usually makes tsh sound) ci (makes s sound) ck (makes k sound) gh (makes f or g sound (also silent)) ng (makes a voiced velar nasal) ph (makes f sound) qu (makes kw sound) rh (makes r sound) sc (makes s sound (also a blend) [clarification needed]) sh (makes ch sound without t) th (makes theta or eth sound) ti (makes sh sound) wh (makes w sound)
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English . [ 1 ] The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɣ , a Latinized variant of the Greek letter gamma , γ , which has this sound ...
In English orthography, the letter k normally reflects the pronunciation of [] and the letter g normally is pronounced /ɡ/ or "hard" g , as in goose, gargoyle and game; /d͡ʒ/ or "soft" g , generally before i or e , as in giant, ginger and geology; or /ʒ/ in some words of French origin, such as rouge, beige and genre.
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In Welsh, the digraph ll fused for a time into a ligature.. A digraph (from Ancient Greek δίς (dís) 'double' and γράφω (gráphō) 'to write') or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.