GH
GH, gh is a digraph (a two-letter grapheme) used with various different values in a number of languages using the Latin alphabet, especially in English, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Italian, Romanian, Friulian and Corsican.
Use in English
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use in English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphabetical word list | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retroalphabetical list | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Common misspellings |
gh in English is a justly notorious digraph, representing as it usually does the sorry relic of a sound (IPA χ) no longer pronounced except in exclamations of disgust, úgh! yeùgh!, the sound of Scottish ch in lóch (which in Ireland is indeed spelt lóugh) - or mutated into the sound of [f] and 'ph'. nîght and cóugh, for example, are pronounced *nîte and *cóff (the accents show pronunciation: see English phonemes). It is pronounced [f] in: tróugh, cóugh, Góugh, enoúgh, toúgh, roúgh, sloúgh skin.
More often it is silent as in slòugh swamp and the English town Slòugh, both *slòu, with quite a variety of preceding vowel sounds and spellings: ŏught, sŏught, bŏught, cåught, nåughty, Våughan, Våughn, dôugh, èight, nèigh, wèigh, slèigh ride (= slây kill), wèight heavy (= wâit time), frèight, heîght, bòugh, throûgh, thôugh, Búrrôughs, sîght, nîght, nîgh, and ough is even sometimes a schwa [ə] as in BrE bòrough, Scàrborough and thòrough, which in AmE are bòrôugh, Scàrborôugh, and thòrôugh, rhyming with fúrrôw. British English pronounces fürlôugh this way too.
This gh is Apart from at the beginning of a word, where it merely sounds like a hard g as in ghôst,
gh uniquely sounds like [p] in híccoúgh (a variant spelling of híccup). In other words the digraph merely represents a hard g, whether Germanic, as in ghôst, ghoûl, ghāstly, or Italian, as in spaghéttì; and h serves to distinguish dínghy boat (which can have hard g or silent g, but always the ng sound) from díngy dirty (soft g: *dínjy).