Talk:Letter

Is a letter a grapheme?

There is no discussion here of letter as a unit of a letter set (alphabet, abjad, abugida, etc) - only discussion of a letter as it has graphic value (grapheme). The graphic/graphemic value is only one value of a letter: letters have ordinal values (third letter=c), nominal values (aitch=h) and correlate loosely to phonetic values (letter with breathy sound is aitch). Letters may also possess numerical value (v=5) and logographic value (u=you). These values stand apart from the graphic value of a letter as discussed in the "Grapheme" article.

In this article "grapheme" keeps re-appearing as a synonym for letter. It is NOT. A grapheme is the GRAPHIC value of a letter -- one aspect of a letter's definition. Wouldn't it help the reader to be given links to letter sets (alphabets, abjads, syllabaries, etc)? I suspect many readers, when searching for "letter" would like to find something like the table at the right.

I would think that links to "letter" would intend to link to an article about letters, rather than a particular letter. Still, it may be useful just to add something like the following by example:

Latin letters: a b c d e . . .

Regarding the 'graphic value' of a letter, hmm. It seems to me that a grapheme is a letter—it is a graphical symbol that may represent any of those other values mentioned above; and the article "Grapheme" seems to agree. If a grapheme was a letter's "graphic value", then what would be the letter?

I think that you may be approaching this from the context of computer representation, which represents a letter in its most abstracted form as a digital value (say, an ASCII code-position) and a symbol from a particular font-set as its graphical representation. But a more general point-of-view is that a letter itself is an atomic unit in an alphabet. A computer representation (and there are many: EBCDIC, ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, etc.) is simply an alternate representation of it. —Michael Z. 2006-01-1 18:12 Z

Well, that's the point. A "letter" is an entity with a set of values. Values include a letter's graphic value, its phonetic value, its ordinal value and its nominal value. Children first learn the order, names and sounds of the letters before they learn their shapes. The blind may also understand letters without learning their graphic values. In other words letters can exist independently of graphemes. Also, consider that Latin P is derived from Greek Pi (derives its name, order in the alphabet, and phonetic value from Pi). It's essentially the same letter as Pi, it just "looks like" Rho. Confining the definition of a letter to a "grapheme" is misleading.

I'm simply advocating a definition that says that a letter is an element of an alphabet, abjad, abugida or syllabary. That's truer than saying a letter = a grapheme.

Interesting points, although I'm still not 100% convinced. On the other hand, I'm no longer convinced that grapheme exactly equals letter. Grapheme and glyph have general meanings, as well as more specific ones in the fields of typography and computer representation. There really ought to be an article for "letter (alphabet)" or something. —Michael Z. 2006-01-4 20:07 Z

Yes. Something needs to let the reader get to another article other than "grapheme" when they want a more general interpretation of letter (alphabet)... an article that can discuss and incorporate things like alphabet, symbol, glyph, grapheme, etc, and also lead the reader easily to articles on individual letters themselves.

How about something like the following:

A letter is an element of a writing system. Writing systems including alphabets, abjads, abugidas and syllabaries are composed of sets of letters. As components of writing systems, letters are associated with symbols - also called signs, characters, graphemes, glyphs and letterforms.

As symbols that denote segmental speech, letters are associated with phonetics. In a purely phonemic alphabet, a single phoneme is denoted by a single letter, but in history and practice letters often denote more than one phoneme. Also, letters may be grouped in twos or threes, called digraphs and trigraphs, to designate specific phonemes. Examples of digraphs in English include ch, sh and th.

Letters may also have numerical value. This is true of Roman numerals and the letters of other writing systems. In English Arabic numerals are typically used instead of letters.

Letters also have specific names associated with them. These names may differ with language and dialect.

The following alphabets and individual letters are discussed in related arcticles:

Cyrillic alphabet: А, Б, В, Г, Ґ, Д, Е, Є, Ж, З, И, І, Ї, Й, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ю, Я, Ь

Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega.

Hebrew alphabet: Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Dalet, He, Waw, Zayin, Heth, Teth, Yodh, Kaph, Lamedh, Mem, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Pe, Tsade, Qoph, Resh, Shin, Tau.

Latin alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.

I'm no expert, but it sounds pretty good. Can anyone else comment on this implied relationship between letters and graphemes? Should this be entitled Letter (alphabetic), Letter (grapheme), Letter (orthography)?

Instead of "Ideally...", which implies a value judgement, maybe write "In a purely phonemic alphabet, a single phoneme..." —Michael Z. 2006-01-4 23:16 Z

I suggest Letter (Writing System) as the article speaks of letters as components of writing systems. But Letter (Alphabet) may speak more directly to most readers in search of its contents.

• Please note that qualifiers (the bits in brackets) are commonly written without capital letters, unless you use a word which should always be capitalised. So it should be Letter (writing system) or Letter (alphabet). - Mgm|^(talk) 10:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Should we include Letters (Slang)?

Should we include a note on the Collegiate Slang Term "Letters" which is used in way's such as "He's got letters". The meaning is to describe someone who has a diploma, Phd. MD. that sort of thing, at the end of there name. anyways is it worth noting, even if just a description on Letter (Disambiguation) itself? Arkkeeper (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Letters are not phonemes

I deleted the part that says that a letter "represents a single phoneme", since that's simply not true. Perhaps you could mention the tendency for letters to be coextensive with phonemes in the main article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dodden (talk • contribs) 16:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)