Digraphs and larger grapheme units
Angela Gill, David Waugh · 2025
It would be easy if, in English, one phoneme was always represented by one grapheme. However, English is a complex language and it is not consistent and transparent. Unfortunately, as there are only 26 letters to represent 44 or more sounds, this means that written English has to have an advanced code where, frequently, sounds are represented by more than one letter and letters represent more than one sound. The alphabetic code refers to the understanding that letters are used to represent the speech sounds of our language. When the letters of the alphabet are used alone, this is referred to as the basic code. However, we also often use graphemes in twos, and in groups of three and four, to represent the sounds in our language; this is referred to as the advanced alphabetic code.