Crossword clues for digraph
digraph
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Digraph \Di"graph\, n. [Gr. di- = di`s- twice + ? a writing, ? to write.] Two signs or characters combined to express a single articulated sound; as ea in head, or th in bath.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 n. (context graph theory English) A directed graph. Etymology 2
n. 1 (label en computing) A two-character sequence used to enter a single conceptual character. 2 (label en linguistics) A pair of letters, especially a pair representing a single phoneme.
WordNet
n. two successive letters (especially two letters used to represent a single sound: `sh' in `shoe')
Wikipedia
Digraph may refer to:
- Digraph (orthography), a pair of characters used together to represent a single sound, such as "sh" in English
- Typographical ligature, the joining of two letters as a single glyph, such as "æ"
- Digraph (computing), a two-character sequence used in computing to enter a single conceptual character
- Digraph (mathematics), or directed graph, in graph theory
- Digraph, component of a CIA cryptonym, a covert code name
A digraph or digram (from the dís, "double" and γράφω gráphō, "to write") 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.
Digraphs are often used for phonemes that cannot be represented using a single character, like the English sh in ship and fish. In other cases they may be relics from an earlier period of the language when they had a different pronunciation, or represent a distinction which is made only in certain dialects, like English wh. They may also be used for purely etymological reasons, like rh in English. Digraphs are used in some Romanization schemes, like the zh often used to represent the Russian letter ж. As an alternative to digraphs, orthographies and Romanization schemes sometimes use letters with diacritics, like the Czech š, which has the same function as the English digraph sh.
In some languages' orthographies, digraphs (and occasionally trigraphs) are considered individual letters, meaning that they have their own place in the alphabet, and cannot be separated into their constituent graphemes, e.g. when sorting, abbreviating or hyphenating. Examples are found in Hungarian (cs, dz, dzs, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs), Czech (ch) and Slovak (ch, dz, dž), and Gaj's Latin Alphabet (lj, nj, dž). In Dutch, when the digraph ij is capitalized, both letters are capitalized (IJ).
Digraphs may develop into ligatures, but these are distinct concepts – a ligature involves a graphical combination of two characters, as when a and e are fused into æ.
Usage examples of "digraph".
Secondly, encipherment by digraphs halves the number of elements available for frequency analysis.
Now she told Telyn the wording and hand digraphs in her land were different.
The digraphs in -w represent labialized consonants, while the digraphs in -y stand for palatalized consonants.
It is possible that some of the consonants written as digraphs must also be counted as double consonants when they occur between vowels.
These are just digraphs denoting unitary consonants: ¤ What is spelt hl, hr was originally unvoiced l, r.
The question of length: It may seem that when they occur medially between vowels, the palatalized and labialized consonants count as long or double consonants (as if the digraphs represented actual consonant clusters after all).
Ignoring the digraphs hw and hy, the letter h may be pronounced A) a "breath-h" like English h as in high, B) more or less as in English huge, human or ideally like ch in German ich, C) like ch in German ach or Scottish loch (in phonetic writing [x]).
In the third place, and most important, the number of digraphs is far greater than the number of single letters, and consequently the linguistic characteristics spread over many more elements and so have much less opportunity to individualize themselves.
English employs one distinctly palatalized consonant, usually represented by the digraph "sh"