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38-400: A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called

76-410: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,

114-437: A grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system . The word grapheme is derived from Ancient Greek gráphō ('write'), and the suffix -eme by analogy with phoneme and other emic units . The study of graphemes is called graphemics . The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a character . By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in

152-507: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in

190-539: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c.  1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from

228-556: A certain amount of deviation from the ideal of exact grapheme–phoneme correspondence. A phoneme may be represented by a multigraph (sequence of more than one grapheme), as the digraph sh represents a single sound in English (and sometimes a single grapheme may represent more than one phoneme, as with the Russian letter я or the Spanish c). Some graphemes may not represent any sound at all (like

266-511: A collection of glyphs that are all functionally equivalent. For example, in written English (or other languages using the Latin alphabet ), there are two different physical representations of the lowercase Latin letter "a": " a " and " ɑ ". Since, however, the substitution of either of them for the other cannot change the meaning of a word, they are considered to be allographs of the same grapheme, which can be written ⟨a⟩ . Similarly,

304-399: A given typeface is called a glyph . There are two main opposing grapheme concepts. In the so-called referential conception , graphemes are interpreted as the smallest units of writing that correspond with sounds (more accurately phonemes ). In this concept, the sh in the written English word shake would be a grapheme because it represents the phoneme /ʃ/ . This referential concept

342-461: A popular abbreviation for the word that . The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of ⟨Þ⟩ grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn ( ⟨Ƿ⟩ , ⟨ƿ⟩ ), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern ⟨ P ⟩ , ⟨p⟩ ). By this stage, th

380-493: A single phoneme are normally treated as combinations of separate letters, not as graphemes in their own right. However, in some languages a multigraph may be treated as a single unit for the purposes of collation ; for example, in a Czech dictionary, the section for words that start with ⟨ch⟩ comes after that for ⟨h⟩ . For more examples, see Alphabetical order § Language-specific conventions . Thorn (letter) Thorn or þorn ( Þ , þ )

418-402: A voiced sound. In typography the lowercase thorn character is unusual in that it has both an ascender and a descender (other examples are the lowercase Cyrillic ф , and, in some [especially italic] fonts, the Latin letters f and ſ ). The letter thorn was used for writing Old English very early on, as was ð , called eth . Unlike eth, thorn remained in common use through most of

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456-622: Is a letter in the Old English , Old Norse , Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots , and some dialects of Middle English . It was also used in medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the digraph th , except in Iceland , where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Futhark and

494-459: Is a system in its own right and should be studied independently from speech. Both concepts have weaknesses. Some models adhere to both concepts simultaneously by including two individual units, which are given names such as graphemic grapheme for the grapheme according to the analogical conception ( h in shake ), and phonological-fit grapheme for the grapheme according to the referential concept ( sh in shake ). In newer concepts, in which

532-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have

570-400: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Grapheme In linguistics ,

608-404: Is linked to the dependency hypothesis that claims that writing merely depicts speech. By contrast, the analogical concept defines graphemes analogously to phonemes, i.e. via written minimal pairs such as shake vs. snake . In this example, h and n are graphemes because they distinguish two words. This analogical concept is associated with the autonomy hypothesis which holds that writing

646-523: Is often jocularly or mistakenly pronounced /jiː/ ("yee") or mistaken for the archaic nominative case of the second person plural pronoun, " ye ", as in "hear ye!". Icelandic is the only living language to keep the letter thorn (in Icelandic; þ , pronounced þoddn , [θ̠ɔtn̥] or þorn [θ̠ɔrn̥] ). The letter is the 30th in the Icelandic alphabet , modelled after Old Norse alphabet in

684-576: Is pronounced as a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠] , similar to th as in the English word thick , or a (usually apical ) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative [ð̠] , similar to th as in the English word the . Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth ⟨Ð, ð⟩ ; however, [ð̠] may occur as an allophone of /θ̠/ , and written ⟨þ⟩ , when it appears in an unstressed pronoun or adverb after

722-458: The Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme /θ/ , sometimes by the same scribe. This sound was regularly realised in Old English as the voiced fricative [ð] between voiced sounds, but either letter could be used to write it; the modern use of [ð] in phonetic alphabets is not the same as the Old English orthographic use . A thorn with the ascender crossed ( Ꝥ ) was

760-517: The ampersand "&" representing the word and , Arabic numerals ); syllabic characters, representing syllables (as in Japanese kana ); and alphabetic letters, corresponding roughly to phonemes (see next section). For a full discussion of the different types, see Writing system § Functional classification . There are additional graphemic components used in writing, such as punctuation marks , mathematical symbols , word dividers such as

798-602: The b in English debt or the h in all Spanish words containing the said letter), and often the rules of correspondence between graphemes and phonemes become complex or irregular, particularly as a result of historical sound changes that are not necessarily reflected in spelling. "Shallow" orthographies such as those of standard Spanish and Finnish have relatively regular (though not always one-to-one) correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, while those of French and English have much less regular correspondence, and are known as deep orthographies . Multigraphs representing

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836-431: The or that , respectively. The following were scribal abbreviations during Middle and Early Modern English using the letter thorn: In later printed texts, given the lack of a sort for the glyph, printers substituted the (visually similar) letter y for the thorn: Thorn in the form of a "Y" survives in pseudo-archaic uses, particularly the stock prefix " ye olde ". The definite article spelt with "Y" for thorn

874-464: The 19th century; it is transliterated to th when it cannot be reproduced and never appears at the end of a word. For example, the name of Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is anglicised as Haf th or. Its pronunciation has not varied much, but before the introduction of the eth character, þ was used to represent the sound [ð] , as in the word " ver þ a ", which is now spelt ver ð a (meaning "to become") in modern Icelandic or normalized orthography. Þ

912-639: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c.  3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c.  1800 BCE , representing

950-757: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c.  900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet

988-436: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage

1026-622: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩

1064-622: The grapheme corresponding to "Arabic numeral zero" has a unique semantic identity and Unicode value U+0030 but exhibits variation in the form of slashed zero . Italic and bold face forms are also allographic, as is the variation seen in serif (as in Times New Roman ) versus sans-serif (as in Helvetica ) forms. There is some disagreement as to whether capital and lower case letters are allographs or distinct graphemes. Capitals are generally found in certain triggering contexts that do not change

1102-531: The grapheme is interpreted semiotically as a dyadic linguistic sign , it is defined as a minimal unit of writing that is both lexically distinctive and corresponds with a linguistic unit ( phoneme , syllable , or morpheme ). Graphemes are often notated within angle brackets : e.g. ⟨a⟩ . This is analogous to the slash notation /a/ used for phonemes . Analogous to the square bracket notation [a] used for phones , glyphs are sometimes denoted with vertical lines, e.g. | ɑ | . In

1140-569: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and

1178-661: The meaning of a word: a proper name, for example, or at the beginning of a sentence, or all caps in a newspaper headline. In other contexts, capitalization can determine meaning: compare, for example Polish and polish : the former is a language, the latter is for shining shoes. Some linguists consider digraphs like the ⟨sh⟩ in ship to be distinct graphemes, but these are generally analyzed as sequences of graphemes. Non-stylistic ligatures , however, such as ⟨æ⟩ , are distinct graphemes, as are various letters with distinctive diacritics , such as ⟨ç⟩ . Identical glyphs may not always represent

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1216-634: The printer's types that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not. The word was never pronounced as /j/, as in ⟨ y es ⟩, though, even when so written. The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used y for " the " in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29. It also used y as an abbreviation for " that ", in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by

1254-745: The same grapheme. For example, the three letters ⟨A⟩ , ⟨А⟩ and ⟨Α⟩ appear identical but each has a different meaning: in order, they are the Latin letter A , the Cyrillic letter Azǔ/Азъ and the Greek letter Alpha . Each has its own code point in Unicode: U+0041 A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A , U+0410 А CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A and U+0391 Α GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA . The principal types of graphemes are logograms (more accurately termed morphograms ), which represent words or morphemes (for example Chinese characters ,

1292-413: The same way that the surface forms of phonemes are speech sounds or phones (and different phones representing the same phoneme are called allophones ), the surface forms of graphemes are glyphs (sometimes graphs ), namely concrete written representations of symbols (and different glyphs representing the same grapheme are called allographs ). Thus, a grapheme can be regarded as an abstraction of

1330-438: The space, and other typographic symbols . Ancient logographic scripts often used silent determinatives to disambiguate the meaning of a neighboring (non-silent) word. As mentioned in the previous section, in languages that use alphabetic writing systems, many of the graphemes stand in principle for the phonemes (significant sounds) of the language. In practice, however, the orthographies of such languages entail at least

1368-517: Was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems . It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ) , although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic . It is pronounced as either a voiceless dental fricative [θ] or its voiced counterpart [ð] . However, in modern Icelandic it

1406-416: Was predominant and the use of ⟨Þ⟩ was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. This was the longest-lived use, though with the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to the common " ye ", as in ' Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that ⟨Y⟩ existed in

1444-504: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in

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