8. The graphemes of written English

8.1 Choosing a written variety to analyse

To match my decision to analyse the RP accent, I have chosen British rather than US spelling as the written variety of English to analyse. In practice, this makes very little difference, since there is far less variation in the spelling of English than in its pronunciation. The differences between British and US spelling make almost no difference to the analysis of the graphemes of written English – the same graphemes are used in both systems, just with different correspondences.

8.2 How many graphemes, and how many correspondences?

More troublesome than the minor differences between British and US spelling are the wide differences in opinion between experts on how many graphemes there are in written English. Wijk (1966: 14) says that the ‘sounds of the spoken [English] language are normally represented by 102 symbols in the written language’, but a great many Oddities are concealed behind that ‘normally’; also he does not count 15 doubled consonants, e.g. <bb, dd>.

At the other extreme, Mountford (1998: 109) says he will ‘work with a combined set of some 235 consonant and vowel symbols’, which on inspection of his tables on p.113 turns out to be more precisely 238 graphemes, which are involved in 407 correspondences. In his figure for graphemes Mountford includes many quite rare graphemes not counted by Wijk, but even Mountford admits that there are others which might be counted but which are so rare and marginal that they are not worth the bother. His example (p.112) is the possible grapheme <schsch> spelling the phoneme /∫/ only in the rare word Eschscholtzia (the California poppy).

Actually, both Wijk and Mountford are right, at different levels of analysis – the number of graphemes you recognise depends on how deep you go into the Oddities of the system (and on various technical decisions – I’ve summarised mine in Appendix A).

I am going to provide three estimates of the number of graphemes by counting:

1) all and only those which appear in what I’ve called the ‘main system’ in chapters 3 and 5;

2) the rest, including the minor patterns and Oddities;

3) both.

All the graphemes which appear in both the main system and the rest in chapters 3 and 5 are listed in Tables 8.1-2, which cover graphemes representing consonants and vowels respectively. Both contain relevant 2- and 3-phoneme graphemes; each of these appears more than once, either within the same Table or across the two. In both, the totals for correspondences show exactly how many entries there are in the relevant column, but those for graphemes show only the numbers of items which have not already appeared in the same column or a previous one. So in the ‘Basic grapheme’ columns, <th> is counted only once among consonant graphemes, and <a, o, oo, u> only once each among vowel graphemes. After those columns, for graphemes I’ve shown only the numbers of new items (indicated by + signs), with some subtotals.

Table 8.1: All the consonant graphemes of written English, by RP phoneme.

The Table includes not only graphemes for single consonant phonemes, but also those for 2- and 3-phoneme sequences involving consonant phonemes. The consonant phonemes are listed in the same order as in chapter 3.

(For simplicity, almost all angled brackets indicating graphemes are omitted).

Table 8.1: All the consonant graphemes of written English, by RP phoneme.

	The main system				The rest
Phoneme	Basic grapheme	Other frequent graphemes	Rare graphemes	Doubled spelling	Doubled spelling + <e>	Oddities, by number of letters				2- & 3-phoneme graphemes
						1	2	3	4	Phoneme sequence	Graphemes
/b/	b	-	-	bb	-	-	bh bu pb	-	-	-	-
/d/	d	ed	-	dd	-	-	bd de dh	ddh	-	-	-
/g/	g	-	-	gg	-	-	gh gu	gue	ckgu	/gz/	x xh
										/gʒ/	x
/m/	m	-	-	mm	mme	-	gm mb me mn nd	mbe	-	/əm/	m
/n/	n	-	-	nn	nne	-	gn kn mn nd ne ng nt nw pn	dne gne	-	/ən/	n
										/nj/	gn
/p/	p	-	-	pp	ppe	b	bp gh pe ph	-	-	-	-
/t/	t	ed	-	tt	tte	-	bt ct dt pt te th tw	-	phth	/tθ/	th
										/ts/	z zz
/r/	r	-	-	rr	-	-	re rh wr	rrh	-	-	-
/k/	c	k /ks/ spelt x	q	ck	-	g x	cc ch cq cu gh ke kh kk qu	cch cqu que	-	/eks/	x
										/ks/	xe xh
										/kʃ/	x xi
/ʧ/	ch	t	-	tch	-	c	cc ci cz te th ti	che	tsch	-	-
/f/	f	ph	-	ff	ffe	v	fe ft gh	pph	-	-	-
/ʤ/	j	g ge	-	dg dge	-	d	ch di dj gg gi jj	-	-	-	-
/l/	l	/əl/ spelt le	-	ll	lle	-	gl le lh	-	-	/əl/	l
										/lj/	ll
/s/	s	c ce se	/ks/ spelt x	ss	sse	t z	cc ps sc st sw	sce sch sth		/ts/	z zz
										/eks/	x
										/ks/	xe xh
/v/	v	f	-	ve	-	-	bv ph vv	-	-	-	-
/z/	z	s se	-	zz	-	x	cz sc ss ts ze	-	-	/gz/	x xh
										/ɪz/	s
/h/	h	-	-	n/a	n/a	j	wh	-	-	-	-
/ŋ/	ng	n	-	n/a	n/a	-	nc nd	ngh ngu	ngue	-	-
/ʃ/	sh	ci si ssi ti	ce	n/a	n/a	c s t	ch sc se sj ss	che chs sch sci	-	/kʃ/	x xi
/ʒ/	si	-	ge s	n/a	n/a	g j z	ci se ti zi	-	-	/gʒ/	x
/θ/	th	-	-	n/a	n/a	-	-	the	phth	/tθ/	th
/ð/	th	-	-	n/a	n/a	-	-	the	-	-	-
/w/	w	u wh	-	n/a	n/a	-	hu ou ww	-	-	/wʌ/	o
										/wɑː/	oi oir oire ois
										/waɪ/	oy
										/waɪə/	oir
/j/	y	i /juː/ spelt ew, u, u.e	/juː/ spelt ue	n/a	n/a	h j	ll	-	-	/juː/	eau eu ewe ui ut uu
										/jʊə/	eur ur ure
										/jə/	eu u ua ure
										/lj/	ll
										/nj/	gn
graphemes	23	+16	+2	+17 =58	7	+0	+59	+19	+4		+19 =108
correspon-dences	24	26	6	17 =73	7	18	92	22	5		36 =180

Table 8.2: All the vowel graphemes of written English, by RP phoneme plus /juː/.

The Table includes not only graphemes for pure vowel phonemes and diphthongs, but also those for 2- and 3-phoneme sequences involving vowel phonemes. The vowel phonemes are listed in the same order as in chapter 5 and, as there, the special 2-phoneme sequence /juː/ is included in the main list. (For simplicity, angled brackets indicating graphemes are omitted).

	The main system			The rest
Phoneme	Basic grapheme	Other frequent graphemes	Rare graphemes	Oddities, by number of letters				2- & 3-phoneme graphemes
				1	2	3	4	Phoneme sequence	Graphemes
/æ/	a	-	-	i	ae ai al ei			-	-
/e/	e	-	-	a u	ae ai ay ea ei eo ie			/eks/	x
/ɪ/	i	e y	-	a o u	ai ee ei ia ie wi	hea		/ɪz/	s
/ɒ/	o	a	-	e i	au ho ou ow	ach eau		-	-
/ʌ/	u	o	-		oe oo ou			/wʌ/	o
/ʊ/	oo	u	-	o	or ou	oul		-	-
/ə/	a	e er o	/əl/ spelt le	i u y	ah ai ar ei eo eu ia io oi or ou ow re ua ur yr	anc ere eau eur oar our ure	ough	/əl/	l
								/əm/	m
								/ən/	n
								/jə/	eu u ua ure
								/aɪə/	ir ire yr yre
								/aʊə/	hour our
								/ɔɪə, waɪə/	oir
/ɑː/	ar	a	-		aa a.e ah al as at au er	aar are arr ear	arre arrh	/wɑː/	oi oir oire ois
/ɜː/	er	ir or ur	-		eu yr	ear ere err eur irr olo our urr	yrrh	-	-
/ɔː/	or	a ar au aw ore	-		al oa	aul aur awe oar oer oor orp orr ort our	augh orps ough ou’re	-	-
/ɔɪ/	oi	oy	-		aw			/ɔɪə/	oir
/aʊ/	ou	ow	-		au	aow	ough	/aʊwə/	hour our
/eə/	are	air ar ear	-		ao er	aer eah e’er eir ere	aire ayer ayor erre ey’re heir	-	-
/ɪə/	ear	eer er ere	-		ir	eir eyr e’re ier		-	-
/ʊə/	-	-	-		ur	eur oor our ure		/jʊə/	eur ur ure
/eɪ/	a.e	a ai ay	-	e	ae ah ao au ea ee e.e ei er es et ey ez	ais ait alf aye	aigh eigh	-	-
/iː/	ee	e ea i y	e.e ie		ae ay ei eo ey i.e is it oe	ois		-	-
/aɪ/	i.e	i igh y	-	a	ae ai ei ey ia ie ir is oy ui ye y.e	ais aye eye	eigh	/aɪə/	ir ire yr yre
								/waɪ/	oy
								/waɪə/	oir
/əʊ/	o	o.e ow	-		au eo ew oa oe oh ol oo os ot ou	aoh eau oat ore owe	ough	-	-
/juː/	u	ew u.e	ue		eu ui ut uu	eau ewe		-	-
/uː/	oo	ew o u u.e	ue		ee eu oe o.e ou ui uu	ieu oeu ooh oue oup ous out oux	ough	-	-
graphemes	16	+17	+4 =37	0	+34	+49	+15		+11 =109
correspon-dences	20	43	5 =68	14	116	70	20		26 =246

Discounting duplicates (including those involving 2- and 3-phoneme graphemes), in Table 8.1 there are 58 graphemes and 73 correspondences in the main system, and 108 graphemes and 180 correspondences in the rest, making a total of 166 graphemes and 253 correspondences in which consonant phonemes are involved.

On the same basis, in Table 8.2 there are 37 graphemes and 68 correspondences in the main system, and 109 graphemes and 246 correspondences in the rest, making a total of 146 graphemes and 314 correspondences in which vowel phonemes are involved.

However, adding together the numbers in the two preceding paragraphs does not yield correct overall totals because several graphemes and correspondences appear in both Tables. Thus <i, u, y> occur as both consonant and vowel graphemes, and some 2-phoneme sequences and both 3-phoneme sequences represented by single graphemes contain both consonants and vowels. De-duplicating these complications reduces the number of graphemes by 28 (6 in the main system, 22 in the rest) and the number of correspondences by 24 (3 in the main system, 21 in the rest).

The full analysis therefore yields totals of:

• 89 graphemes and 138 correspondences in the main system
• 195 graphemes and 405 correspondences in the rest, and
• 284 graphemes and 543 correspondences overall.

Thus my analysis has led to distinctly higher totals even than Mountford’s 238 graphemes and 407 correspondences. This is mainly because I have included a lot of correspondences found only in small numbers of more recent French loanwords which he did not include.

8.3 The graphemes of the main system and the rest

Alphabetical lists of the 89 graphemes of the main system and of the 195 others are provided in Tables 8.3 and 8.4 respectively. Theoretically it should be possible to spell any English word using just the 89 graphemes of the main system and their 138 main-system correspondences, since they cover all 44 phonemes and allow for different positions in the word and various other constraints. However, from my analysis and every other author’s it is abundantly clear that the full system is much more complex – and, to give just one example, trying to spell schwa consistently as <er> in stem-final position and <a> elsewhere would probably produce many confusing spellings.

Table 8.3 shows that there are, of course, 26 single-letter graphemes in English spelling; they all belong to the main system. The numbers of graphemes of all sizes in the main system and the rest are:

	main system	the rest	total
single letters	26	0	26
digraphs	53	118	171
trigraphs	10	57	67
four-letter graphemes	0	20	20
total	89	195	284

Simplified versions of the tables of correspondences are provided in Appendix B: they are intended to be much more useful to teachers and to writers of early reading books than the comprehensive versions in Tables 8.1-2.

Table 8.3: Alphabetical list of the 89 graphemes of the main system.

a	a.e	ai	air	ar	are	au	aw	ay
b	bb
c	ce	ch	ci	ck
d	dd	dg	dge
e	ea	ear	ed	ee	e.e	eer	er	ere	ew
f	ff
g	ge	gg
h
i	ie	i.e	igh	ir
j
k
l	le	ll
m	mm
n	ng	nn
o	o.e	oi	oo	or	ore	ou	ow	oy
p	ph	pp
q
r	rr
s	se	sh	si	ss	ssi
t	tch	th	ti	tt
u	ue	u.e	ur
v	ve
w	wh
x
y
z	zz

Table 8.4: Alphabetical list of the other 195 graphemes.

aa	aar	ach	ae	aer	ah	aigh	aire	ais	ait	al	alf
	anc	ao	aoh	aow	arr	arre	arrh	as	at	augh	aul
	aur	awe	aye	ayer	ayor
bh	bd	bp	bt	bu	bv
cc	cch	che	chs	ckgu	cq	cqu	ct	cu	cz
de	ddh	dh	ddh	di	dj	dne	dt
eah	eau	e’er	ei	eigh	eir	eo	e’re	err	erre	es	et
	eu	eur	ewe	ey	eye	eyr	ey’re	ez
fe	ffe	ft
gh	gi	gl	gm	gn	gne	gu	gue
hea	heir	ho	hour	hu
ia	ier	ieu	io	ire	irr	is	it
jj
ke	kh	kk	kn
lh	lle
mb	mbe	me	mme	mn
nc	nd	ne	ngh	ngu	ngue	nne	nt	nw
oa	oar	oat	oe	oer	oeu	oh	oir	oire	ois	ol	olo
	ooh	oor	orp	orps	orr	ort	os	ot	oue	ough	oul
	oup	our	ou’re	ous	out	oux	owe
pb	pe	phth	pn	ppe	pph	ps	pt
qu	que
re	rh	rrh
sc	sce	sch	sci	sj	sse	st	sth	sw
te	the	ts	tsch	tte	tw
ua	ui	ure	urr	ut	uu
vv
wi	wr	ww
xe	xh	xi
ye	y.e	yr	yre	yrrh
ze	zi