Gh (digraph)
Gh is a digraph found in many languages.
In Latin-based orthographies
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.Alexander John Ellis reported it being pronounced as on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border and close to the Scottish border in the late nineteenth century.
It is also occasionally pronounced, such as in Edinburgh as well as in Keighley.
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 represent before,, and. This usage survives in place names such as Ghent.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 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'.Igbo
In Igbo, the ⟨gh⟩ digraph is used in words like agha and is pronounced /ɣ/.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 .
The Ukrainian National transliteration system uses to avoid occurrence of another digraph, usually which is used for another type of phoneme. Such as the word "pack" in Ukrainian would be Romanized as zghraia rather than zhraia, which could be misconstrued to intend *жрая. The Ukrainian transliteration standard DSTU 9112:2021 uses to represent common Ukrainian letter г.