Did you know that a single sound is produced from a three-letter combination? Yes, you guessed right, a trigraph it is. For example, the sound of ‘igh’ in high. Penlighten gives a comprehensive list of most common words in English language that begin with consonant trigraphs. This will come handy while teaching your kids about word structures, and when playing word games like scrabble.
The German Origin
The trigraph ‘sch’ is German and is substituted by ‘sh’ in English language.
Trigraph is a combination of three successive letters representing a single sound, such as the sound of ‘tch’ in catchor watch. Trigraphs can be prefixes or suffixes. In the example we saw, ‘tch’ is a suffix.
Trigraphs fall in the category of consonant blends, which is a blend of 2 or 3 consonants that produce a distinct consonant sound. For instance, the sound of ‘cr’ in crack (c and r are both consonants), the sound of ‘str’ in string (s, t, r are all consonants). These are also known as consonant clusters.
Some common consonant trigraphs are nth, sch, str, thr etc., where nth is added as a suffix trigraph, while sch, str, thr are prefixes.
Here’s a list of some common examples that begin with consonant trigraphs.
