A heptagraph (from the , and , ) is a sequence of seven letters used to represent a single sound (phoneme), or a combination of sounds, that do not correspond to the individual values of the letters.
Heptagraphs are extremely rare. Most other fixed sequences of seven letters are composed of shorter multigraphs with a predictable result. The seven-letter German sequence , used to transliterate the Russian and Ukrainian letter , as in for Russian/Ukrainian (, ) "
borscht", is a sequence of a
trigraph and a
tetragraph . Likewise, the
Juu languages have been claimed to have a heptagraph , but this is also a sequence, of and .
See also
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Multigraph (orthography)
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Digraph (orthography)
A digraph () or digram is a pair of character (symbol), characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two char ...
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Pentagraph
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Hexagraph
References
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