Linguistics

Writing Systems of the World | Abjads, Alphabets, Abugidas, Syllabaries & Logosyllabaries

Grapheme

the smallest meaningful contrastive unit in a writing system.

In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest unit of a writing system of any given language. An individual grapheme may or may not carry meaning by itself, and may or may not correspond to a single phoneme of the spoken language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, typographic ligatures, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and other individual symbols. A grapheme can also be construed as a graphical sign that independently represents a portion of linguistic material.

The word grapheme, coined in analogy with phoneme, is derived from Ancient Greek (gráphō), meaning 'write', and the suffix-eme, by analogy with phoneme and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called graphemics.

The concept of graphemes is an abstract one and similar to the notion in computing of a character. By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in a specific typeface is called a glyph. For example, the grapheme corresponding to the abstract concept of "the Arabic numeral one" has two distinct glyphs (allographs) in the fonts Times New Roman and Helvetica.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme

Phoneme

Any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.

Despite there being just 26 letters in the English language there are approximately 44 unique sounds, also known as phonemes. The 44 sounds help distinguish one word or meaning from another. Various letters and letter combinations known as graphemes are used to represent the sounds.

The 44 English sounds fall into two categories: consonants and vowels.

What is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)?

How can you pronounce a word you've never read? It can be a bit tricky. How about a word in a foreign language? Now that must be impossible! Or is it? Imagine a set of symbols that could tell you how to pronounce any word in any language on the planet? Well that is exactly what the International Phonetic Alphabet is. Currently, the IPA consists of 107 sound symbols, 52 diacritics (accents) and 4 prosodic marks (intonations) encompassing virtually every phoneme used in every language on the earth. So for any written word, you can identify the associated phoneme symbols, and with a bit of practice, pronounce the word! Congratulations, you can speak Greek now!

The IPA was created by the International Phonetic Association. Founded in 1886 in Paris, their original mission was to help school children pronounce words in foreign languages and to aid in the teaching of reading. Today their mission is to promote the scientific study of phonetics.

Consonants

Phoneme	IPA Symbol	Graphemes	Examples	Voiced?
1	b	b, bb	bug, bubble	Yes
2	d	d, dd, ed	dad, add, milled	Yes
3	f	f, ff, ph, gh, lf, ft	fat, cliff, phone, enough, half, often	No
4	g	g, gg, gh,gu,gue	gun, egg, ghost, guest, prologue	Yes
5	h	h, wh	hop, who	No
6	dʒ	j, ge, g, dge, di, gg	jam, wage, giraffe, edge, soldier, exaggerate	Yes
7	k	k, c, ch, cc, lk, qu ,q(u), ck, x	kit, cat, chris, accent, folk, bouquet, queen, rack, box	No
8	l	l, ll	live, well	Yes
9	m	m, mm, mb, mn, lm	man, summer, comb, column, palm	Yes
10	n	n, nn,kn, gn, pn	net, funny, know, gnat, pneumonic	Yes
11	p	p, pp	pin, dippy	No
12	r	r, rr, wr, rh	run, carrot, wrench, rhyme	Yes
13	s	s, ss, c, sc, ps, st, ce, se	sit, less, circle, scene, psycho, listen, pace, course	No
14	t	t, tt, th, ed	tip, matter, thomas, ripped	No
15	v	v, f, ph, ve	vine, of, stephen, five	Yes
16	w	w, wh, u, o	wit, why, quick, choir	Yes
17	z	z, zz, s, ss, x, ze, se	zed, buzz, his, scissors, xylophone, craze	Yes
18	ʒ	s, si, z	treasure, division, azure	Yes
19	tʃ	ch, tch, tu, ti, te	chip, watch, future, action, righteous	No
20	ʃ	sh, ce, s, ci, si, ch, sci, ti	sham, ocean, sure, special, pension, machine, conscience, station	No
21	θ	th	thongs	No
22	ð	th	leather	Yes
23	ŋ	ng, n, ngue	ring, pink, tongue	Yes
24	j	y, i, j	you, onion, hallelujah	Yes

Vowels

Phoneme	IPA Symbol	Graphemes	Examples
25	æ	a, ai, au	cat, plaid, laugh
26	eɪ	a, ai, eigh, aigh, ay, er, et, ei, au, a_e, ea, ey	bay, maid, weigh, straight, pay, foyer, filet, eight, gauge, mate, break, they
27	e	e, ea, u, ie, ai, a, eo, ei, ae	end, bread, bury, friend, said, many, leopard, heifer, aesthetic
28	i:	e, ee, ea, y, ey, oe, ie, i, ei, eo, ay	be, bee, meat, lady, key, phoenix, grief, ski, deceive, people, quay
29	ɪ	i, e, o, u, ui, y, ie	it, england, women, busy, guild, gym, sieve
30	aɪ	i, y, igh, ie, uy, ye, ai, is, eigh, i_e	spider, sky, night, pie, guy, stye, aisle, island, height, kite
31	ɒ	a, ho, au, aw, ough	swan, honest, maul, slaw, fought
32	oʊ	o, oa, o_e, oe, ow, ough, eau, oo, ew	open, moat, bone, toe, sow, dough, beau, brooch, sew
33	ʊ	o, oo, u,ou	wolf, look, bush, would
34	ʌ	u, o, oo, ou	lug, monkey, blood, double
35	u:	o, oo, ew, ue, u_e, oe, ough, ui, oew, ou	who, loon, dew, blue, flute, shoe, through, fruit, manoeuvre, group
36	ɔɪ	oi, oy, uoy	join, boy, buoy
37	aʊ	ow, ou, ough	now, shout, bough
38	ə	a, er, i, ar, our, ur	about, ladder, pencil, dollar, honour, augur
39	eəʳ	air, are, ear, ere, eir, ayer	chair, dare, pear, where, their, prayer
40	ɑ:	a	arm
41	ɜ:ʳ	ir, er, ur, ear, or, our, yr	bird, term, burn, pearl, word, journey, myrtle
42	ɔ:	aw, a, or, oor, ore, oar, our, augh, ar, ough, au	paw, ball, fork, poor, fore, board, four, taught, war, bought, sauce
43	ɪəʳ	ear, eer, ere, ier	ear, steer, here, tier
44	ʊəʳ	ure, our	cure, tourist

https://www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/44-phonemes-in-english.html

Diacritic

A diacritic -- also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, "distinguishing"), from διακρίνω (diakrī́nō, "to distinguish"). Diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacriticalis only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute( \´ ) and grave( ` ), are often called accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.

Diacriticsin Latin & Greek

• accent

• acute(\´)

• double acute(˝)

• grave(`)

• double grave(̏)

• circumflex(ˆ)

  The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name fromLatincircumflexus"bent around"-a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē). The circumflex in the Latin script ischevron-shaped (ˆ), while the Greek circumflex may be displayed either - like atilde(˜) or like aninverted breve( ̑ ).

• caron, háček(ˇ)

• breve(˘)

• inverted breve( ̑ )

• cedilla(¸)

• diaeresis, umlaut(¨)

• dot(·)

• palatal hook( ̡)

• retroflex hook( ̢)

• hook above,dấu hỏi(̉)

• horn(̛)

• iota subscript(ͅ)

• macron(¯)

• ogonek, nosinė(˛)

• perispomene(͂)

• overring(˚)

• underring(˳)

• rough breathing(῾)

• smooth breathing(᾿)

• Marks sometimes used as diacritics

• apostrophe(’)

• bar(◌̸)

• colon(:)

• comma(,)

• period(.)

• hyphen(˗)

• prime(′)

• tilde(~)

• Diacritical marks in other scripts

• Arabic diacritics

• Early Cyrillic diacritics

• kamora(҄)

• pokrytie(҇)

• titlo(҃)

• Gurmukhī diacritics

• Hebrew diacritics

• Indicdiacritics

• anusvara(ंংം)

• chandrabindu(ँఁ)

• nukta(़)

• virama(्്్්್)

• visarga(ःঃ)

• IPA diacritics

• Japanese diacritics

• dakuten(ﾞ)

• handakuten(ﾟ)

• Khmer diacritics

• Syriac diacritics

• Thai diacritics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumflex