hello

Some sounds can be understood either as a single sound
or as a combination of two sounds. Accordingly, there
are writing systems which represent them by one letter
and others which represent them by the letters of the
different sounds which constitute them. My problem is
that I don't know which sounds allow this ambiguity.
At least it's with affricated stops, aspirated stops
and diphtongs. But does it also occur e.g. with
combinations with liquids as tr- or kl-?

(There is some confusion as there are also scripts
that use digraphs or even trigraphs: combinations of
letters handled as if it would be one letter, that
means: it can't be analysed into the letters that
constitute it. Example: English <th>.)

Examples:
The postalveolar affricate is in English (normally)
<ch> (as in "church"), but in German <tsch> (as in
"deutsch" - German), which is an analysis of that
sound into <t> + <sch> (the German representation for
English <sh>); the German write <z> (as in "Geiz" -
avarice) while the English have to analyse the same
sound as <ts> (as in "gets"); the anciant Greek had
single letters for aspirated stops, but the anciant
Roman analysed them in Greek loan words as <ch>, <ph>,
<th>; devanagari has (at least for sanskrit) single
representations for the diphtongs /ai/ and /au/ (it's
not really letters, but it's definitly not compound of
an /a/ and an /i/ or /j/ resp. /u/ or /w/ sign) while
e.g. in Spanish they always have to be analised as
<ai> (as "aire" - air) (or at word endings <ay> as
"hay" - there is) resp. <au> (as "auto" - car).

Thus the conflict between an interpretation as a
single sound and a analysis into several sounds occurs
at least with affricated stops, aspirated stops and
diphtongs. But does it also occur with
syllable-initial consonant clusters such as /tr/ or
/kl/?

The only phenomenon alike I know is the special
diacritic mark for combinations with r which uses the
devanagari script. Can this be understood as a
one-letter interpretation of clusters with r or must
it be analysed as a faded ligature, i.e. a
combination? But wouldn't the fading of the ligature
lead to the one-letter interpretation? Is there
something alike in other scripts?

thanks in advance and greetings

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