What is a grapheme?

In simple words, a grapheme is any letter of the alphabet of a language. It corresponds to the minimum writing unit of any language and, therefore, the minimum unit whose change or replacement by another symbol changes the meaning of a written word.

Graphemes vs. Phonemes

The grapheme is the equivalent in written language of the phoneme in spoken language. In this sense, a phoneme is nothing more than the minimum phonological unit that allows distinguishing the pronunciation of two different words. That is to say, when in a word we change one phoneme for another, it becomes another word.

Just as many different languages ​​use different graphemes to represent written language with some graphemes common to multiple languages ​​and others unique, there are also phonemes that are unique and characteristic of each language.

But, if written words are graphic representations of the sounds we make when speaking (that is, of phonemes), how do we distinguish when, when writing a set of letters, we refer to the written symbols themselves (that is, graphemes) or to the phonemes that these symbols represent?

This is accomplished by means of a convention. In general, we distinguish graphemes from phonemes in writing by enclosing the former in angle brackets or angle brackets. That is, by convention, if we write <b>, we are referring to the grapheme b and not to the phoneme.

graphemes and allographs

Allographs are different graphic ways of representing the same grapheme. In other words, they are graphemes that look different, but actually have the same meaning (ie, they are actually the same grapheme). There are many variants for the different graphemes used in each written language. For example, in the field of typography, we can represent each letter of the alphabet in different styles and with different shapes that, however, still represent the same letter. Some examples are <a>, <a> , <a> , and <a> .

complex graphemes

In some languages, such as Spanish, there are graphemes that are used both separately and associated with each other in sequence. For example, in Spanish <rr>, <ch>, <ll>, <gu> and <qu> are very frequently used sequences of letters that represent completely different phonemes from the separate letters.

This makes us doubt whether the aforementioned combinations are themselves different graphemes, or if, on the contrary, it is simply a digraph formed by two graphemes that produce a single sound.

To verify that it is actually two graphemes in sequence, it is enough to find two different words that only differ in one of the two graphemes. For example, if we compare mud with boat , we quickly realize that changing one of the two <r> graphemes to the <c> grapheme changes the meaning of the word. This immediately tells us that rr is not a grapheme, since it can be decomposed into two simpler graphemes.

We can easily find similar examples for three of the other four digraphs mentioned by comparing words like pa ch o ( meaning a short person with a thick build) and pa ct o , calla and calma , etc. The digraph qu is a little more difficult, since, in Spanish, the letter q is practically not used without being accompanied by the u, except in the case of some foreign names such as Qatar, or when it is used as part of an acronym. In this case, we could consider that q by itself cannot be a grapheme, while qu can.

Lowercase and uppercase

It is generally accepted that lowercase and uppercase essentially represent the same letter and their distinction is used primarily to comply with the grammatical rules of writing. However, outside of the beginning of a sentence, a capital letter allows us to distinguish words that represent proper nouns from others that do not. Thus, when it is in the middle of a sentence, Marco and marco do not mean the same thing, since the first word is a proper name, while the second refers to a picture frame.

In the above case, it is clear that replacing <M> with <m> changed the meaning of the word, so both symbols represent different graphemes. However, this is more the exception than the rule, and usually the pairs of lowercase and uppercase are considered to be different forms of the same grapheme.

Graphemes and diacritics

On the other hand, it is also important to mention here other symbols that are frequently used in writing and that modify the letters we write. This includes the accents, the tilde of the ñ, the diaeresis and the hook, among others. From the point of view of the grapheme concept, the different letters modified with diacritics represent written units that change the meaning of words.

For example, change and change do not mean the same thing, and the only difference is the last letter. This would make <ó> one more grapheme to add to the list, and the same could be said of the other letters modified by diacritics. However, there is no agreement among linguists on whether it should be considered that way or if the diacritic mark itself should be considered as a grapheme.

examples of graphemes

Some examples of graphemes in different languages ​​are:

• The letters of the Latin alphabet <a, b, c, d, etc.>
• The letters of the Greek alphabet <a, β, γ, δ, etc.>
• The kanji of Japanese writing (あ, り, が, と, etc.)
• The letters of the Arabic alphabet (ل, ك, ق, ف, etc.)

References

BBC. (2022, March 31). graphemes . BBC Bitesize. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zf2yf4j/articles/zd49bqt

Bustos, A. (2011, March 18). What is a grapheme? LANGUAGE BLOG. https://blog.lengua-e.com/2011/que-es-un-grafema/

Coelho, F. (2017, June 14). Grapheme (what it is, explanation and examples) . Dictionary of Doubts. https://www.diccionariodedudas.com/grafema/

Concept. (nd). Grapheme – What it is, concept, meaning, phonemes . https://concepto.de/grafema/

Definition of. (nd). Definition of grapheme . https://definicion.de/grafema/

TheSchoolRun. (nd). What is a graphme? https://www.theschoolrun.com/what-grapheme