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Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ah is spoken as a monophthong ( / ɑː / ), while the word ow is spoken as a diphthong in most varieties ( / aʊ / ).
Length distinctions were eliminated in these diphthongs, yielding diphthongs /ai, ɛi, ei, au, ɛu, eu, iu, ɔu, ou/ plus /ɔi, ui/ borrowed from French. Middle English breaking: Diphthongs also formed by the insertion of a glide /w/ or /j/ (after back and front vowels, respectively) preceding /x/. Mergers of new diphthongs:
Note that some words contain an ae which may not be written æ because the etymology is not from the Greek -αι-or Latin -ae-diphthongs. These include: In instances of aer (starting or within a word) when it makes the sound IPA [ɛə]/[eə] (air). Comes from the Latin āër, Greek ἀήρ. When ae makes the diphthong / eɪ / (lay) or / aɪ ...
The falling diphthong /ɪw/ of due and dew changed to a rising diphthong, which became the sequence [juː]. The change did not occur in all dialects, however; see Yod-dropping. The diphthongs /əɪ/ and /əʊ/ of tide and house widened to /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, respectively. The diphthong /ʊɪ/ merged into /əɪ/ ~ /aɪ/.
Most dialects of English turn /iː/ into a diphthong, and the monophthongal is in free variation with the diphthongal [ɪi ~ əi] (with the former diphthong being the same as Geordie [ei], the only difference lying in the transcription [citation needed]), particularly word-internally. However, diphthongs are more common word-finally.
Word-finally, diphthongs are more usual. Compare the identical development of the close front FLEECE vowel. The change of /uː.ɪ/ to [ʊɪ] is a process that occurs in many varieties of British English in which bisyllabic /uː.ɪ/ has become the diphthong [ʊɪ] in certain words.
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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.