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Digraphic letters (was: Dutch "ij")

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, July 18, 2002, 5:31
On Tuesday, July 16, 2002, at 11:48 , John Cowan wrote:

> =?iso-8859-1?q?Jan=20van=20Steenbergen?= scripsit: > >> Of course, you are right. All I wanted to say is it took two hits on the >> typewriter to produce it. But as a matter of fact, it is one letter, >> indeed. >> Just curious: are there other examples in the world's languages of >> similar >> behaviour? > > Absolutely. Spanish has always treated "ch" and "ll" as single letters > (despite the recent craven decision by the Royal Academy to change > traditional sort order, where "cinco" precedes "chile"),
Welsh also treats "ch" and "ll" as single letters. Happily Welsh dictionaries still lists words like _cyw_ (chicken), _cywrain_ (skilfull) before _chwa_ (breeze, gust).
> but types > them as two and capitalizes them as "Ch", "Ll".
So does Welsh :) Welsh also counts the following as single letters: dd ff ng /N/ [placed between {g} and {h} ph rh th
> Croatian takes the same attitude with "dz" and "dz^", which have > single-letter correspondents in Cyrillic script.
I wonder how widespread this practice is. Ray.