English orthography
English orthography
is
the alphabetic
spelling system used by the English lan-
guage. English orthography, like other alpha-
betic orthographies, uses a set of rules that
generally governs how speech sounds are
represented in writing. English has relatively
complicated spelling rules when compared to
other languages with alphabetic orthograph-
ies. Because of the complex history of the
English language, nearly every sound can be
legitimately spelled in more than one way,
and many spellings can be pronounced in
more than one way.
Function of the letters
Note: In the following discussion, only one or
two common pronunciations of American and
British English varieties are used in this art-
icle for each word cited. Other regional pro-
nunciations may be possible for some words,
but indicating all possible regional variants in
the article is impractical.
Phonemic representation
Further information: Phonemic orthography
Like most alphabetic systems, letters in Eng-
lish orthography may represent a particular
sound. For example, the word cat
(pro-
nounced /kæt/) consists of three letters c, a,
and t, in which c represents the sound /k/, a
the sound /æ/, and t the sound /t/.
Single letters or multiple sequences of let-
ters may provide this function. Thus, the
single letter c in the word cat represents the
single sound /k/. In the word ship (pro-
nounced /ʃɪp/), the digraph sh (two letters)
represents the sound /ʃ/. In the word ditch,
the three letters tch represent the sound /tʃ/.
Less commonly, a single letter can repres-
ent more than one sound. The most common
example is the letter x, which often repres-
ents more than one sound as in the prefix ex-
where it represents the consonant cluster
/ks/ (for example, in the word ex-wife, pro-
nounced /ɛkswaɪf/).
The same letter (or sequence of letters)
may indicate different sounds when the letter
occurs in different positions. For instance,
the digraph gh represents the sound /f/ at the
end of
single-syllable,
single-morpheme
words, such as cough (prono