Ph (digraph)

Ph (digraph)

Ph is a digraph in the English language and many other languages that represents the sound /IPA|f/ (voiceless labiodental fricative). "Ph" in English generally occurs in words derived from Greek, due to Latin transcription of Greek Phi (Φ φ) as "ph". In Ancient Greek, this letter originally stood for /IPA|pʰ/ (aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive). In some non-standard spellings of English, like leet, "ph" may be used as a replacement of all occurrences of "f". Exceptionally, "ph" is pronounced /IPA|v/ in the name "Stephen".

The French and German languages and the auxiliary languages Interlingua and Occidental also use the digraph for Greek loanwords. In German, "ph" can be replaced by "f"; the replacement is allowed in certain cases according to the German spelling reform of 1996. In most Romance (such as Spanish) and Germanic languages, "f" is used in place of "ph". Languages written in a Cyrillic script, such as Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian, regularly use Ф ф – similar to the Greek Φ φ – where the Romance and Germanic languages use "ph" or "f".

In Welsh, "ph" represents IPA|/f/ in native words, but only word-initially as the result of an initial consonant mutation of a word beginning with "p". Irish uses "f" for words of Greek origin, while "ph" represents the lenited form of p, resulting in the sound IPA|/f/ as well.

In Vietnamese, "ph" is exclusively used because the letter "f" does not exist.

In Old High German, "ph" stands for the affricate IPA|/pf/.

In the romanizations of Indo-Aryan languages and of Thai, "ph" represents the aspirated sound /IPA|pʰ/.

In the Ossete Latin alphabet, it was used to write the sound IPA|/p’/.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Digraph (Linguistik) — Digraph bezeichnet in der Graphematik zwei Buchstaben, die für eine Lautung stehen. Für mehr als zwei Buchstaben verwendet man griechische Zahlwörter als Präfixe, zum Beispiel Trigraph oder Tetragraph. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Begriffsbestimmung 2… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Digraph — steht für: Digraph (Linguistik), eine Kombination von zwei Buchstaben, die für ein Phonem, eine Silbe oder ein Morphem stehen Digraph (Informatik), eine Kombination aus zwei Zeichen für ein im verwendeten Zeichensatz nicht verfügbares… …   Deutsch 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… …   Wikipedia

  • 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. [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • digraph — 1788, in linguistics, from Gk. di twice (see DI (Cf. di ) (1)) + graphe writing (see GRAPHY (Cf. graphy)). In mathematics, from 1955, a contraction of directed graph …   Etymology dictionary

  • digraph — is a combination of two letters which together represent a single speech sound, e.g. dg in judge and ea in head. Certain digraphs are printed as ligatures, in which the two letters are joined, e.g. æ …   Modern English usage

  • digraph — ► NOUN ▪ a combination of two letters representing one sound, as in ph …   English terms dictionary

  • digraph — [dī′graf΄] n. [ DI 1 + GRAPH] a combination of two letters functioning as a unit to represent one sound (Ex.: r ea d, br ea d, ch in, gra ph ic) digraphic adj. digraphically adv …   English World dictionary

  • Digraph (orthography) — For other uses, see Digraph (disambiguation). In Welsh, the digraph ⟨Ll⟩, ⟨ll⟩ fused for a time into a ligature. Further information: list of Latin digraphs and list of Cyrillic digraphs A digraph or digram (from the Greek: δίς dís… …   Wikipedia

  • Digraph (mathematics) — A directed graph or digraph G is an ordered pair G := (V, A) with * V is a set, whose elements are called vertices or nodes, * A is a set of ordered pairs of vertices, called directed edges, arcs, or arrows.It differs from an ordinary, undirected …   Wikipedia

  • Digraph (Informatik) — Als Digraph bezeichnet man in der Informatik eine Kombination aus zwei Zeichen, welche als Ersatz für ein einzelnes Zeichen stehen, welches nicht im verwendeten Zeichensatz zur Verfügung steht. Verschiedene Programmiersprachen machen hiervon… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”