2035: di-, tri-, and quadgraphs Jul 11, 2020

English has a lot of sounds, ~40 depending on the dialect, but only 26 letters, some of which tend to represent the same things. As a result, we end up with di-, tri-, and quadgraphs, which are combinations of 2, 3, or 4 letters that make one sound. Lots of languages do this as with the German CH, SCH, and TSCH which even build off of each other, but these are not so consistent in English. English has some, like SH, TH, CH, PH, etc. but these do not always make the same sounds, in particular TH (as in 'that' and 'thin') or CH in 'chauvinist'. This is true (several times over) with the English quadgraph OUGH, which can represent 7 different sounds. See if you can find an example for each.

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