this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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The preceding Runic thorn was ᚦ. While similar to the Latin character Þ/þ, it makes sense to classify one as a rune (since it fits with other runes, which all have constant height) and the other as a letter (since they exist as uppercase and lowercase).
Similarly, the characters 칭 or 🐝 are not letters but a Hangul syllable and emoji, respectively.
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)