How now, brown bureaucrat?

July 29, 2005 6:36 AM

LinguaFilter: A phoneme comprised of two vowels, like the “ou” in “house” is called a dipthong. Is there a specific term for a phoneme made of two consonants, like the “sh” in “rash?”
posted by ijoshua to Writing & Language (23 answers total)

Not all pairs of vowels together are dipthongs. Two examples of this are "book" and "cough". In these cases, the two letters together form a single sound, represented by a single character when transcribed in the IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet, which I won't try to write here since I hear metafilter eats stuff like that in unpredictable ways). Likewise, in your example 'rash', 'sh' is a single sound and would also be represented by a single character in IPA.
posted by jepler at 6:59 AM on July 29, 2005

This is a digraph - a single sound represented by a two character combination.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:02 AM on July 29, 2005

And the first one is actually called a dipHthong but the Wikipedia automagically redirects. In case you were Googling....
posted by jessamyn at 7:04 AM on July 29, 2005

Yeah, "sh" or /ʃ/ is not really composed of two consonants phonemes the same way that a diphthong is composed of two vowel phonemes.
posted by grouse at 7:15 AM on July 29, 2005

Response by poster: Wofldog: it seems that digraph describes diphthongs, as well, being any pair of letters that combine to form a single sound. I'm wondering if there is a term specifically for a pair of consonants.

I guess if we’re going to be IPA-pedantic, than a proper example would be “ch” /tʃ/ in “chip.”
posted by ijoshua at 7:28 AM on July 29, 2005

Best answer: Two or more consonants in succession is called a consonant cluster. For example, in the word lengthen, there is one two-consonant cluster, like so: /ŋθ/. It's a three-consonant cluster if you epenthesize a /k/, like most "American English" speakers do.
posted by cog_nate at 7:46 AM on July 29, 2005

Best answer: No, there isn't (as far as I know), but that's because consonants don't combine in the way vowels do. Affricates (like your "ch" example) are the closest thing, but they really are two separate sounds, a stop followed by a fricative; whether you choose to analyze them as a single phoneme in a given language is a separate issue. (Etymologically, diphthong means simply 'two sounds' or 'double sound,' so theoretically it could have been used for two consonants as well; it wasn't, because the concept isn't really applicable to consonants.)
posted by languagehat at 7:48 AM on July 29, 2005

I guess if we’re going to be IPA-pedantic

Can we? Please?

than a proper example would be “ch” /tʃ/ in “chip.”

That would be an affricate. But on preview, languagehat already said that.
posted by grouse at 7:51 AM on July 29, 2005

When I had phonics class in grade school, 30+ years ago, those were called "consonant blends".
posted by soundslikeobiwan at 7:54 AM on July 29, 2005

They were called "clusters" or "consonant clusters" in my elementary school phonics classes as well (in Baldwin Park, California ... in Los Angeles County).
posted by redteam at 8:04 AM on July 29, 2005

Now that you mention it, I remember "consonant blends" too (NY, 25 years ago), as in "strengths" and "tasks". (He asks for the tasks of cleaning the flasks.)

Hijack: are there real examples in English with more than three in a row? Do walri with bad hygiene accumulate "tuskscum"?
posted by Aknaton at 9:19 AM on July 29, 2005

I'm with grouse that "sh" is a bad example, because it is really just a single sound that we choose to represent with two characters.

Also, I was under the impression that a digraph is a smashed-together character like œ or æ.
posted by adamrice at 9:23 AM on July 29, 2005

Don't know any of this nomenclature, but a German teacher explained that this is where their umlauts come from: the trailing "e" was first placed after the o, a or u; then smashed together, then shrunk and rotated up to on top of the letter, and finally replaced with the two little dots (so now you know why, lacking chars with umlauts, they can be replaced with their trailing "e" digraph substitutes).
Same development with the French umlauted "i" and "e"? Dunno.
posted by Rash at 9:47 AM on July 29, 2005

Hijack: are there real examples in English with more than three in a row? Do walri with bad hygiene accumulate "tuskscum"?

Bootstrap?
posted by cortex at 10:29 AM on July 29, 2005

How about "sixths"? X is really k plus s, so you get, roughly, /siksθs/. Four consonants in a row, including that bizarre sequence of three fricatives.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:34 AM on July 29, 2005

Instruction? Obstruction!

I'm starting to think r-as-fourth-consonant is cheating.
posted by cortex at 11:00 AM on July 29, 2005

Hijack: are there real examples in English with more than three in a row? Do walri with bad hygiene accumulate "tuskscum"?

Lightswitch?
posted by Skot at 11:06 AM on July 29, 2005

If Jesus exercises, is he a strengthchrist?
posted by KRS at 11:15 AM on July 29, 2005

Response by poster: Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, “strengths” is one of the most complex single-syllables in English.
posted by ijoshua at 1:09 PM on July 29, 2005

Rash, I think the umlaut in french indicates that the letter is pronounced separately as opposed to forming a diphthong. For example, naïve or noël. But that's just based on observation, not any formal training.
posted by cali at 1:03 AM on July 30, 2005

Rash, I think the umlaut in french indicates that the letter is pronounced separately as opposed to forming a diphthong. For example, naïve or noël.

That's called a diaresis, not an umlaut.
posted by grouse at 2:53 AM on July 30, 2005

And sometimes it indicates the letter is silent, as in Madame de Staël. (Incidentally, in French it's called a tréma.)
posted by languagehat at 6:18 AM on July 30, 2005

You can use the term 'diglyph' (as I do in my MeFi profile, yay) to represent any two-letter combination, without reference to phonemes.

Because, y'know, written language and phonemes really don't have much to do with each other.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:37 PM on July 30, 2005