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.
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)
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.
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)