A trigram is a group of three letters that create a unique sound in spoken language. They are rare in English, with “sch” being a common example. Trigraphs must create an unusual vowel sound, unlike “-ing” or “tea.” French words borrowed into English may also contain trigraphs.
A trigram is a group of three letters together that make up a single phoneme, or sound, within a spoken language. What differentiates this type of group is that the phoneme they make is not the sound they would make if all three were simply spoken in order. Pronouncing a trigram creates a new sound that is unique to that particular letter arrangement, such as the “sch” sound in a word like “schwa.” These are quite rare in English, while digraphs that consist of just two letters together as a phoneme are quite common.
The main components of a trigraph are that it consists of three letters and creates a vowel sound that is unusual or unique to its particular grouping. While a grouping such as the “-ing” suffix consists of three letters together, the sound that is created by them is simply each letter spoken in order. Similarly, an arrangement of letters in a word like “tea” may look like a trigram, but it’s not. The “t” at the beginning of the word is simply pronounced normally, and followed by a digraph consisting of the two vowels “e” and “a” to create a single phoneme.
“Sch” can be a trigram in some words, although there are also words where it isn’t. In English words like “schilling” or in the British pronunciation of “schedule,” these three letters come together to make a phoneme with a sound more commonly written as “sh.” In contrast to this, however, is a word like “school” or the American pronunciation of “schedule” in which the sound of the three letters is “sk” and the “h” becomes silent. The use of “sch” in these words is neither a trigram nor a digraph, as they simply take the expected pronunciation of “s” followed by “c”, rather than a new sound.
There are also some vowel combinations that can create trigraphs, although these are quite unusual in English words that aren’t directly borrowed from another language. The word beau in French, for example, includes a trigram composed of the three vowels “eau” that create a phoneme similar to a long “o”. This is a common phoneme in French words, and many French words used in English have this sound. However, borrowing and swapping such sounds can be confusing for some developing speakers, as the English word “beautiful” contains the same trigram, but the sound they create is very different from that of “beau.”
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
