orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...

starts with a

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

(i.e. has a null onset). Some

abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vow ...

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel no ...

s, and

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

s have zero consonants, generally because they have an orthographic rule that all syllables must begin with a consonant letter, whereas the language they transcribe allows syllables to start with a vowel. In a few cases, such as Pahawh Hmong below, the lack of a consonant letter represents a specific consonant sound, so the lack of a consonant sound requires a distinct letter to disambiguate.

Uses

*The letter א ''

aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These lett ...

'' is a zero consonant in Ashkenazi Hebrew. It originally represented a

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

, a value it retains in other Hebrew dialects and in formal Israeli Hebrew. *In

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, the related letter ا ''alif'' is often a placeholder for a vowel. *In

Javanese script The Javanese script (natively known as ''Aksara Jawa'', ''Hanacaraka'', ''Carakan'', and ''Dentawyanjana'') is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed on the island of Java. The script is primarily used to write the Javanese langu ...

, the letter ꦲ ha is used for a vowel (silent 'h'). *In Korean

hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The l ...

, the zero consonant is ''ieung''. It appears twice in , "velar consonant". also represents -''ng'' at the end of a syllable, but historically this was a distinct letter. * Burmese , Khmer អ, Thai อ, and Lao ອ are null-initial vowel-support letters. Thai อ่าง, for example, is ''ang'' "basin". (า is the vowel ''a'' and ง the consonant ''ng.'') อ and ອ pull double duty as vowels in some positions. *In

Thaana Thaana, Taana or Tāna ( ) is the present writing system of the Maldivian language spoken in the Maldives. Thaana has characteristics of both an abugida (diacritic, vowel-killer strokes) and a true alphabet (all vowels are written), ...

of the Maldives, އ is a zero. It requires a diacritic to indicate the associated vowel: އި is ''i,'' އޮ ''o,'' etc. This is similar to an abjad, but the vowel mark is not optional. *The Lontara script for Buginese, with zero ᨕ, is similar to Thaana, except that without a vowel diacritic ᨕ represents an initial vowel ''a.'' The Lepcha script of Nepal is similar. *In Cree and Inuit, a triangle represents a vowel-initial syllable. The orientation of this triangle specifies the vowel: ᐁ ''e,'' ᐃ ''i,'' ᐅ ''o,'' ᐊ ''a.'' *In the Romanized Popular Alphabet used for Hmong, an

apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...

marks a vowel-initial syllable. The absence of any letter indicates that the syllable starts with a glottal stop, a far more common occurrence. * Pahawh Hmong, a semi-syllabary, also has a zero consonant, as well as a letter for glottal stop, with the lack of an initial consonant letter indicating that the syllable begins with a .

References

{{Reflist Typography

Uses

See also

References