94
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Interesting! I always thought a letter was a thing that mapped to a sound. So obviously not Chinese characters. But the thorn as the th sound would qualify.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Nope. Phonemes or their groups, most commonly represented by IPA characters, map to a sound. If you know anything about English spelling, you'll know that letters and sounds don't correspond in many cases.

However, you are right that "letter" can be used for any segmental (phoneme-based) writing system, including runic (examples)

this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
94 points (100.0% liked)

Out of the loop

13335 readers
50 users here now

A community that helps people stay up to date with things going on.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS