consonant . Conversely, the letter can produce the consonant clusters (annex), (exist), (sexual), or (some pronunciations of "luxury"). It is worth noting that often produces sounds in two different syllables (following the general principle of saturating the subsequent syllable before assigning sounds to the preceding syllable). Also note a combination digraph and cluster as seen in length with two digraphs , representing a cluster of two consonants: (although it may be pronounced instead, as followed by a voiceless consonant in the same syllable often does); lights with a silent digraph followed by a cluster , : ; and compound words such as sightscreen or catchphrase . Korean In Modern Hangul (Korean alphabet) there are 11 consonant-clusters: ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ. These come as the final consonant in a syllabic block and refer to consonant letters, not consonant sounds. They instead influence the consonant of the next syllable. However, Middle Korean did have consonant clusters, as evidenced by double consonant clusters in initial position (e.g. ᄓ and ㅯ) as well as triple consonants in both positions (e.g. ㅫ and ᇒ). Frequency Not all consonant clusters are distributed equally among the languages of the world. Consonant clusters have a tendency to fall under patterns such as the sonority sequencing principle (SSP); the closer a consonant in a cluster is to the syllable's vowel, the more sonorous the consonant is. Among the most common types of clusters are initial stop-liquid sequences, such as in Thai (e.g. , , and ). Other common ones include initial stop-approximant (e.g. Thai ) and initial fricative-liquid (e.g. English ) sequences. More rare are sequences which defy the SSP such as Proto-Indo-European and (which many of its descendants have, including English). Certain consonants are more or less likely to appear in consonant clusters, especially in certain positions. The Tsou language of Taiwan has initial clusters such as , which doesn't violate the SSP, but nonetheless is unusual in having the labio-dental in the second position. The cluster is also rare, but occurs in Russian words such as (). Consonant clusters at the ends of syllables are less common but follow the same principles. Clusters are more likely to begin with a liquid, approximant, or nasal and end with a fricative, affricate, or stop, such as in English "world" . Yet again, there are exceptions, such as English "lapse" . See also