Glyphs and graphemes [was Re: Cult-like behaviour]

[Terry Reedy]

On 7/16/2018 10:25 PM, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 2018-07-17 01:08, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> In English, I think most people would prefer to use a different
>> term for whatever "sh" and "ch" represent than "character".
> 
> The term you may be reaching for is "consonant cluster"?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster

Sibilant (soft) ch (as opposed to hard aspirated chi as in Greek letter 
khi (visually like X)) and sh are single consonants, single phonemes in 
spoken language.  In less parsimonious writing systems than Latin, they 
are often represented by single characters.  When transliterated into 
Latin characters, both decorated c and s and ch and sh are used.

'str', as in string or street is a consonant cluster. It might be 
represented by a single ligature, but I would not expect any 
phoneme-based writing system to consider the result to be a single 
character.  (Given that the sound of X (hard chi) mutated into 'ks', the 
latter is not impossible.)

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy