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Comment by IncRnd | Hacker News Reader

> as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet.

That specious, meaning appearing true but actually false. It is a diphthong expressed by a ligature of two letters. The claim was never made that a diphthong is a single letter, and it is easily expressed in modern English, in a computer using ascii and outside on a piece of paper.

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In latin, æ or ae was a (di)graph for the /ae/ diphthong. In English, it is typically pronounced using the /i/ phoneme, which isn't a diphthong. I have heard it pronounced as /ai/ dipthong, but only rarely.

In English, I'm pretty sure the ae digraph is always pronounced as /i/, so calling it a dipthong would probably confuse most people.

Agreed. That is a very good point about it possibly being just a digraph and not always a diphthong. This depends, however, on the use, since it does sometimes slide and other times is just a ligature. The issues seem to stem from the pronunciation changes and the great vowel shift. As you point out, language is a messy business.

A ligature is a character composed of two or more graphemes, it is not a letter

You're correct about that, sort of but not in the sense of language - only for computer definitions. A ligature in language is "a printed or written character (such as æ or ﬀ) consisting of two or more letters or characters joined together" [1]

[1] merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ligature

.... so in other words, it's not a letter in the modern English alphabet. Seems pretty accurate to me.

And hence, not a letter.

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