When it comes to words and sounds, Diphthong and Digraph are well represented to explain how sounds are made and what pair of letters made these sounds. Diphthongs are made up of vowels i.e., a, e, i, o, u while digraphs are made up of only consonants or a consonant and a vowel.
Many people get confused with these two terms and wonder about the Difference between Diphthong and Digraph. So in this article, I will explain to you the meaning of these two words and help you understand the difference between them.
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Meaning of Diphthong
A diphthong is a combination of two vowels to make one longer vowel sound. One vowel moves to another and produces a long vowel sound and this process is called gliding. In other words, we can say that the first vowel glides over the second and this makes the second vowel silent. These vowels can also be referred to as compound or complex vowels.
Some most common combinations of letters to form diphthongs include – oy/oi as in boy and coin &ou / ow in cloud and cow.
Meaning of Digraph
Digraphs are sounds that are made on the combination of two letters to make one sound used phonetically to make up words. But it doesn’t make the whole words, it just makes an initial or final part of a word. When these two letters combine it doesn’t produce the sound of an individual letter or even you can’t make the sound of each letter to sound out the word. So basically the combined sound of the letters may differ from the letters so you have to know what they make as a combined sound.
Examples of consonant digraphs include ph, ch, sh, th, ng, and examples of consonants and a vowel include ea, oa, oe, ie, ue, ar, er, etc.
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Understanding the Root Words to understand the difference
In both words, the common root word is ‘di’ which indicates ‘two’ means both diphthongs and digraphs have two of something. The word Diphthong, which ends with ‘phthong’ somewhat refers to phon which means sound. So diphthongs are sounds that are made from the combination of two vowels and used between words.
While in the word Digraph, it ends with ‘graph’ meaning letters or writing. So digraph is a sound that is made with the combination of two consonants or a vowel and a consonant to make a new letter sound and is often used at the beginning or end of the words.
Difference between these two words
The basic difference between these two words is that they both have ‘di’ in common which refers to two but ‘thongs’ refers to sounds while ‘graphs’ refers to letters. So diphthongs are about sounds and digraphs are about letters.
Another difference is, in diphthongs two vowels glide to form a longer vowel sound while digraphs combine to make a new sound.
Diphthongs are usually found in the middle of the words while digraphs are found usually at the starting or ending of the words.
In diphthongs, the first vowel is dominant whose sound is drawn out to make a long vowel sound while digraphs make an individual sound without sliding together.
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The Final Words
So I hope this article was helpful to understand the difference between these two words and it made the use of them clear to you. The major difference that you have to remember is that diphthongs are sounds that are combinations of two vowels to form a long vowel sound while digraphs are a sound made with two letters to make a single letter sound.
