Ui (digraph)

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Ui is a digraph found in many languages.

In Dutch it stands for the diphthong [œy], and in Irish and Scottish Gaelic for [ɪ] after a velarized consonant.

In German, it represents the diphthong [ʊɪ̯], which only appears in interjections such as "pfui!".

In English, it represents the sound [uː] in fruit, juice, suit and pursuit. However in many English words this does not hold. For example, it fails in words where the u in ui functions as a modifier of a preceding g (forcing g to remain [g] rather than shifting to [dʒ] in guild, guilt, guilty, sanguine, Guinan, etc.), doing the same with c (in words like circuit and biscuit), or in cases of unusual etymological spelling or syllable separation (e.g. build, suite, and intuition).