Gh (digraph)
Encyclopedia
Gh is a digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

 found in many languages.

English

In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, ⟨gh⟩ historically represented [x] (the voiceless velar fricative
Voiceless velar fricative
The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....

, as in the Scottish Gaelic word loch). In modern English, ⟨gh⟩ is almost always either silent or pronounced /f/ (see ough
Ough (combination)
Ough is a letter sequence often seen in words in the English language. In Middle English, where the spelling arose, it was probably pronounced with a back rounded vowel and a velar fricative, e.g., or . It is by far the sequence of letters with the most unpredictable pronunciation, having at least...

). 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
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

 used a simple ⟨h⟩--and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.

When gh occurs at the beginning of a word in English, it is pronounced /ɡ/ as in "ghost", "ghastly", "ghoul", "ghetto", "ghee" etc. In this context, it does not derive from a former /x/.

American Literary Braille has a dedicated cell pattern for the digraph
Digraph
Digraph may refer to:* Digraph , 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"...

 ⟨gh⟩ (dots 1 2 6).

Irish

In Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

, ⟨gh⟩ represents /ɣ/ (the voiced velar fricative
Voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...

) and /j/ (the voiced palatal approximant
Palatal approximant
The palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is '...

). Word-initially it represents the lenition
Irish initial mutations
Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphological and syntactic conditions...

 of ⟨g⟩, for example mo ghiall mə jiəl̪ˠ "my jaw" (cf. giall ɟiəl̪ˠ "jaw").

Italian

In Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 and Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

, ⟨gh⟩ represents /ɡ/ (the voiced velar plosive
Voiced velar plosive
The voiced velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g. Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called "opentail G" , though the "looptail G" is...

) before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩.

Maltese

The Maltese language
Maltese language
Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...

 has a related digraph, ⟨għ⟩. It is considered a single letter, called għajn (the same word for eye
Eye
Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptors in conscious vision connect light to movement...

 and spring
Spring (hydrosphere)
A spring—also known as a rising or resurgence—is a component of the hydrosphere. Specifically, it is any natural situation where water flows to the surface of the earth from underground...

, named for the corresponding Arabic letter 'ayin
Ayin
' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...

). It is usually silent, but it is necessary to be included because it changes the pronunciation of neighbouring letters, usually lengthening the succeeding vowels. At the end of a word (when not substituted by an apostrophe), it is pronounced ħ. Its function is thus not unlike modern English gh, except that the English version comes after vowels rather than before like Maltese (għajn would come out something like aighn if spelled as in English).

Tlingit

In Canadian Tlingit
Tlingit language
The Tlingit language ) is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada. It is a branch of the Na-Dené language family. Tlingit is very endangered, with fewer than 140 native speakers still living, all of whom are bilingual or near-bilingual in English...

 ⟨gh⟩ represents /q/, which in Alaska is written ⟨ǥ⟩.

Taiwanese

In Daighi tongiong pingim
Daighi tongiong pingim
Daī-ghî tōng-iōng pīng-im is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien based upon Tongyong Pinyin. Up to the present, DT is one kind of orthographies for the Taiwanese language in general...

, ⟨gh⟩ represents /ɡ/ (the velar consonant
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....

) before ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩.

Uyghur language

GH gh, a digraph in Uyghur(Uyghur Latin script
Uyghur Latin Yéziqi
Uyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...

) ,GH gh represents ʁ in Uyghur Latin script
Uyghur Latin Yéziqi
Uyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...

.

In romanization

In the romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...

 of various languages, ⟨gh⟩ usually represents the voiced velar fricative
Voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...

 (/ɣ/). Like ⟨kh⟩ /x/, ⟨gh⟩ may also be pharyngealized, as in several Caucasian
Languages of the Caucasus
The languages of the Caucasus are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....

 and Native American languages
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...

.
In transcriptions of Indo-Aryan languages
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

 such as Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 and Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

, as well as their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...

, ⟨gh⟩ represents a voiced velar aspirated plosive /ɡʱ/ (often referred to as a breathy or murmured voiced velar plosive)

See also

  • Phonological history of English consonants
    Phonological history of English consonants
    The phonological history of English consonants is part of the phonological history of the English language in terms of changes in the phonology of consonants.-H-cluster reductions:* The wine–whine merger is the merger of with...

  • List of Latin digraphs
  • Yogh
    Yogh
    The letter yogh , was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing y and various velar phonemes. It was derived from the Old English form of the letter g.In Middle English writing, tailed z came to be indistinguishable from yogh....

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