Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Conversely, ⟨gh⟩ is never pronounced /f/ in syllable onsets other than in inflected forms, and is almost never pronounced /ɡ/ in syllable codas (the proper name Pittsburgh is an exception). At the beginning of syllables, ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced /ɡ/, as in ghost / ɡ oʊ s t/. For instance, ⟨gh⟩ represents /f/ at the end of some words ( tough / t ʌ f/) but not in others ( plough / p l aʊ/). The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced differently when occurring in different positions within a word. The most common example is ⟨x⟩, which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in tax / t æ k s/).

Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds.

In hatch / h æ tʃ/, the trigraph ⟨tch⟩ represents /tʃ/. Thus, in thrash / θ r æ ʃ/, the digraph ⟨th⟩ (two letters) represents /θ/. Sequences of letters may perform this role as well as single letters. For example, at / ˈ æ t/ consists of 2 letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨t⟩, which represent / æ/ and / t/, respectively. Within a specific word usually represent a particular phoneme. Letters in English orthography positioned at one location Function of the letters įurther information: Phonemic orthography On the other hand, it also adds to the discrepancy between the way English is written and spoken in any given location. As a result of this, many words are spelled the way that they were pronounced more than 600 years ago, instead of being spelled like they are pronounced in the 21st century.ĭespite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most recognised variations being British and American spelling, and its overall uniformity helps facilitate international communication. Most of the spelling conventions in Modern English were derived from the phonemic spelling of a variety of Middle English, and generally do not reflect the sound changes that have occurred since the late 15th century (such as the Great Vowel Shift). For example, the word ghost was spelled gost in Middle English, until the Flemish spelling pattern was unintentionally substituted, and happened to be accepted. This is partly due to the large number of words that have been borrowed from a large number of other languages throughout the history of English, without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms, and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors, who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language. However, unlike with most languages, there are multiple ways to spell every phoneme, and most letters also represent multiple pronunciations depending on their position in a word and the context. This standardisation began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century. Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad degree of standardisation. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Part of a series on theĮnglish orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

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