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Codes & LettersCiphers, scripts, symbols — every code humans write, taken apart.

Definition

Letter Debt

Updated

Letter debt is a metaphor Codes & Letters uses for irregularities that a writing system built up over its history and that readers still spend effort learning today. In this picture spelling works like a debt: the cost was run up long ago, and each new reader pays part of it. The term describes; it does not pass a verdict that a spelling is a burden or a mistake.

Three parts every example needs

Codes & Letters uses the term only for an example that states all three of the following, each with a source. If any one is missing, the term is not used.

  1. A specific historical cause. What happened to produce the irregularity: for instance, a sound change that the spelling never followed, or a borrowed word that kept the spelling of the language it came from.
  2. The cost today. What the irregularity costs a reader or a learner now.
  3. What it still does. The work the spelling still does, for instance telling apart words that sound alike, showing where a word came from or how it relates to other words, or marking grammar.

Why the third part is required

A spelling can carry a cost and still do useful work. Leaving the work out would turn the metaphor into a ranking, and Codes & Letters does not rank writing systems or languages by how efficiently they encode. With all three parts on the table, a reader can weigh the cost against the use.

Examples on the site

Each example below is set out in full, with its sources, on the page it links to.

One sound, three letters: c, k and q

On the Latin Alphabet page, the example is one sound written with c, k and q.

  • Cause. Ryuichi Hotta, following a 1970 study by Tanaka, writes that Etruscan picked C, K or Q by the next vowel and that the surplus was passed on. Latin settled on C for most words, kept K for a few such as Kalendae and wrote Q before V. After the Norman Conquest, Hotta writes, quoting the Oxford English Dictionary, English spelling gradually came to keep c before a, o, u, l and r and to write k before e, i and y. Peter Giles adds in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that from the 13th century English also gave c the sound of s before e, i and y.
  • Cost today. Writing the k sound in modern English means choosing among at least c, k and qu, Hotta notes. A reader must also know that c sounds like s before e and i, as in city, and like k before a, o and u, as in calm; both examples come from an 1812 printing of Samuel Johnson's grammar.
  • What it still does. Johnson noted that the two sounds of c could be written with s and k, but that c "preserves to the eye the etymology of words, as face from facies, captive from captivus." He also wrote that k goes before e and i "where, according to English analogy, c would be soft," as in kept and king.

One rune, several sounds: the 16-rune row

The second example comes from the Elder Futhark page: in Scandinavia, the 24-rune row shrank to 16.

  • Cause. Between about AD 500 and 700, sound changes such as umlaut and breaking gave the language new vowels, while the row kept only 16 of its 24 runes and no new runes were made for them. So one rune did several jobs: k stood for k, g and ng, t for t, d and nd, and b for b, p and mb, as Michael Schulte sets out in a 2006 study. Why the row shrank "still remains disputed," Schulte wrote.
  • Cost today. Anyone reading a Viking Age inscription today has to decide which sound each rune stands for. On a skull fragment from Ribe, Denmark, tuirk is read as Old Norse dverg, "dwarf," with t for d and k for g, Schulte notes. Aslak Liestøl concluded in 1981 that several inscriptions needed a fresh look to pin down which sounds their runes stand for.
  • What it still does. A vowel changed by umlaut was usually written with the rune of the vowel it came from, which Schulte calls an "etymological notation principle," so the spelling keeps pointing back to the word's earlier vowel.

What the term is not

  • Not a score. No number attaches to letter debt.
  • Not a position on spelling reform. The site reads the history of irregular spelling and takes no side in reform debates.
  • Not a theory of origins. Like the other metaphors on the site, it opens a question. It settles nothing about where a writing system came from, where it is heading or whether it is better or worse than another.

How sources are handled on the site: About Codes & Letters. Other terms used on the site: the eye's thumb on the scale and frequency fingerprint.

Sources

For the c, k and q example, from the Latin Alphabet page:

Sources for the 16-rune example, from the Elder Futhark page: