Gh (digraph)


Gh is a digraph found in many languages.

In Latin-based orthographies

Indo-European languages

Germanic languages

English
In English historically represented , and still does in lough and certain other Hiberno-English words, especially proper nouns. In the dominant dialects of modern English, is almost always either silent or pronounced . It is thought that before disappearing, the sound became partially or completely voiced to or, which would explain the new spelling - Old English used a simple - and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.
It is also occasionally pronounced, such as in Edinburgh.
When gh occurs at the beginning of a word in English, it is pronounced as in "ghost", "ghastly", "ghoul", "ghetto", "ghee" etc. In this context, it does not derive from a former.
American Literary Braille has a dedicated cell pattern for the digraph .
Middle Dutch
In Middle Dutch, was often used to represents before,, and.
The spelling of English word ghost with a was likely influenced by the Middle Dutch spelling gheest.

Latin languages

In Italian and Romanian, represents before and. In Esperanto orthography, can be used when the is missing, which represents. In Galician, it is often used to represent the pronunciation of gheada.

Irish

In Irish, represents and . Word-initially it represents the lenition of, for example mo ghiall "my jaw".

Juǀʼhoan

In Juǀʼhoan, it's used for the prevoiced aspirated velar plosive.

Malay

In the Malay and Indonesian alphabet, is used to represent the voiced velar fricative in Arabic origin words.

Maltese

The Maltese language has a related digraph,. It is considered a single letter, called għajn. 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. Its function is thus not unlike modern English gh, except that the English version comes after vowels rather than before like Maltese għ.

Swahili

In the Roman Swahili alphabet, is used to represent the voiced velar fricative in Arabic origin words.

Tlingit

In Canadian Tlingit represents, which in Alaska is written.

Taiwanese

In Daighi tongiong pingim, represents before,,,, and.

Uyghur

In Uyghur Latin script, gh represents.

Vietnamese

In Vietnamese alphabet, represents before,,.

In romanization

In the romanization of various languages, usually represents the voiced velar fricative. Like , may also be pharyngealized, as in several Caucasian and Native American languages.
In transcriptions of Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi, as well as their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, represents a voiced velar aspirated plosive .
In the romanization of Ukrainian language is used seldom to avoid occurrence of another digraph, usually which is used for another type of phoneme. Such as the word "flock" in Ukrainian would be Romanized as zghraya rather than zhraya.