The Cyrillic script family contains many specially treated two-letter combinations, or digraphs, but few of these are used in Slavic languages. In a few alphabets, trigraphs and even the occasional tetragraph or pentagraph are used.
In early Cyrillic, the digraphs and were used for . As with the equivalent digraph in Greek, they were reduced to a typographic ligature, , and are now written . The modern letters and started out as digraphs, and . In Church Slavonic printing practice, both historical and modern, (which is considered as a letter from the alphabet's point of view) is mostly treated as two individual characters, but is a single letter. For example, letter-spacing affects as if they were two individual letters, and never affects components of . In a context of Old Slavonic language, is a digraph that can replace a letter and vice versa.
Modern Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet make little or no use of digraphs. There are only two true digraphs: for and for (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian). Sometimes these digraphs are even considered as special letters of their respective alphabets. In standard Russian, however, the letters in and are always pronounced separately. Digraph-like letter pairs include combinations of consonants with the soft sign (Serbian/Macedonian letters and are derived from and ), and or for the uncommon and optional Russian phoneme .and also for /v/. Native descriptions of Cyrillic writing system often use the term "digraph" to combinations and (Bulgarian, Ukrainian) as they both correspond to a single letter of Russian and Belarusian alphabets ( is used for , and for ).
Cyrillic uses large numbers of digraphs only when used to write non-Slavic languages; in some languages such as Avar, these are completely regular in formation.
Many Caucasian languages use (Abkhaz), (Kabardian & Adyghe), or (Avar) for labialization, just as many of them, like Russian, use for palatalization. Since such sequences are decomposable, regular forms will not be listed below. (In Abkhaz, with sibilants is equivalent to , for instance ö , öà, öà, but this is predictable phonetic detail.) Similarly, long vowels written double in some languages, such as for Abkhaz or for Kirghiz "bear", or with glottal stop, as Tajik ðà, are not included.
Archi: ðÃÂð , ðà, ðÃÂà, ððà, óò , óà, óà, óÃÂò , óÃÂà, óÃÂÃÂò , óà, õÃÂõ , õà, õÃÂà, öò , ÷ò , øÃÂø , øà, úú , úò , úúò , úà, úÃÂò , úà, úÃÂò , úúà, úÃÂà, úúÃÂà, úÃÂÃÂò , úúÃÂÃÂò , úà, úÃÂò , ûà, ûûà, ûÃÂò , ûûÃÂò , ûà, ûÃÂò , þÃÂþ , þà, þÃÂà, þþà, ÿÿ , ÿà, ÃÂà, ÃÂò , ÃÂà, ÃÂà, ÃÂò , ÃÂòà, ÃÂÃÂà, ÃÂà, ÃÂÃÂà, àà, àò , ààò , àà, àÃÂà, ààÃÂà, àÃÂÃÂò , ààÃÂÃÂò , àà, àÃÂò , àÃÂà, àÃÂÃÂò , ÃÂò , ÃÂà, ÃÂÃÂà, ÃÂò , ÃÂà, ÃÂÃÂò , ÃÂò , ÃÂò , ÃÂà, ÃÂÃÂ
Avar uses for labialization, as in àÃÂò . Other digraphs are:
The àdigraphs are spelled this way even before vowels, as in "made", not *óÃÂñÃÂýð.
Note that three of these are tetragraphs. However, gemination for the 'strong' consonants in Avar orthography is sporadic, and the simple letters or digraphs are frequently used in their place.
The Belarusian language has the following digraphs:
Chechen uses the following digraphs:
The vowel digraphs are used for front vowels for other Dagestanian languages and also the local Turkic languages Kumyk and Nogay. digraphs for ejectives is common across the North Caucasus, as is óàfor .
Kabardian and Adyghe both use for labialization, as in ÃÂà. óàis , though ó is ); úàis , despite the fact that ú is not used outside loan words.
Other digraphs are:
Labialized, the trigraph becomes the unusual tetragraph úàÃÂà.
Tabasaran uses gemination for its 'strong' consonants, but this has a different value with ó.
It uses for labialization of its postalveolar consonants: ÃÂò , öò , ÃÂò , ôöà, à, ÃÂÃÂà).
Tatar has a number of vowels which are written with ambiguous letters that are normally resolved by context, but which are resolved by discontinuous digraphs when context is not sufficient. These ambiguous vowel letters are õ, front or back , ÃÂ, front or back ; and ÃÂ, front or back . They interact with the ambiguous consonant letters ú, velar or uvular , and ó, velar or uvular .
In general, velar consonants occur before front vowels and uvular consonants before back vowels, so it is frequently not necessary to specify these values in the orthography. However, this is not always the case. A uvular followed by a front vowel, as in "kinsman", for example, is written with the corresponding back vowel to specify the uvular value: úðÃÂôÃÂÃÂ. The front value of ð is required by vowel harmony with the following front vowel ÃÂ, so this spelling is unambiguous.
If, however, the proper value of the vowel is not recoverable through vowel harmony, then the letter àis added at the end of the syllable, as in "poet". That is, is written with a àrather than a ø to show that the ó is pronounced rather than , then the àis added to show that the àis pronounced as if it were a ø, so the discontinuous digraph ÃÂ...àis used here to write the vowel . This strategy is also followed with the ambiguous letters õ, ÃÂ, and àin final syllables, for instance in cheap. That is, the discontinuous digraphs õ...ÃÂ, ÃÂ...ÃÂ, ÃÂ...àare used for plus the front vowels .
Exceptional final-syllable velars and uvulars, however, are written with simple digraphs, with ÃÂ for velars and ÃÂ for uvulars: pure, promise.
The Ukrainian language has the following digraphs:
In the Cyrillization of Mandarin, there are digraphs ÃÂ÷ and ÃÂö, which correspond to Pinyin z/j and zh. Final n is ýÃÂ, while ý stands for final ng. ÃÂù is yu, but àyou, ÃÂ- yu-, -ÃÂù -ui.