Sons et lettres: A Pronunciation Method for Intermediate-level French

19 GRAPHEMES One concept that is used throughout Sons et lettres is the concept of the grapheme . This is a technical term used in English language reading instruction which may be unfamiliar to you. (Other words commonly used in this context are letter , digraph , and trigraph .) We use it because it is more accurate and more inclusive than the word letter . Since the notion of the grapheme is the basis for all the lessons in this book, it is essential that you understand it and its ambiguities. We define a grapheme as a letter or combination of letters within a word that represent a given sound . For example, the letter a in English commonly represents the vowel sound in cat , and the letters c and t are graphemes that usually represent the sounds /k/ and /t/, respectively. Similarly, the combination ea is a grapheme that commonly represents the vowel sound in wheat , the grapheme sh commonly represents the final consonant sound in fish , and the grapheme ough often represents the sound /o/ in the word though . (Note: characters between forward slashes are phonetic or IPA symbols, as explained below on page 26.) In each of these cases, a grapheme, whether it be a single letter or a combination of two or more letters, is usually understood to represent a single sound, except in a few cases (see inset below). The difficulty that besets many spelling systems, however, (and especially English!), is that the value of a grapheme (i.e., the sound it represents) may not be stable. That is, the same grapheme may also represent other, different sounds in other words or contexts. So, the letter a, which represents one vowel in cat , is also used to represent a different sound in Kate , and yet another in father . Similarly, the grapheme ea , which represents one sound in wheat , can also represent the sound / E / as in head , and the combination ough can represent the two INTRODUCITON