Hello.

It is the firs time i write to the list. I'm Spanish speaking,
also know
some Japanese and English.
I don't know if the following is a proper question to this group
but as I don't find anything about the subject and there could be some
chance i ask you.

I have fund that the roman alfabet seems to have some graphic
symbolism. Letters that use to be read as interrupt sounds are mostly
represented
by a vertical stroke:

<p> <t> <k> (or <q>) <b> <d> <g>

and those of them that are read as voiced have a round stroke in their base:

<b> <d> <g>

also letters that are read as fricative sounds have ondulatory or zif-zag
shapes:


<f> <z> <s> (and <j> in Spanish that sounds /x/)


I would say that liquids (consonantic as well as vocalic sounds) show that
nature:

<r> <l>

they realy would graphicaly be consonant and vowel at the same time, for
example:
the <r> is a low stroke with a small loop, and the <l> is a big loop.
Letters that are nasal would be represented from my point of vew just as a
low horizontal
line but they have vertical strokes as a necessary artifac to be seen.

<n> <m>

Letters for vowels seem to show also a graphic trend from a vertical
extensión of the stroke
to colapse if we put them in phonetical order (i show it for the five
elementary letters, that
happen to be almost good for some roman languages and Japanese):

<i> <e> <a> <o> <u>

the <i> even have a high separate point (and we can't imagine that its
design was done watching
a spectrogram!), the <e> is what would be expected in between <i> and the
openness of the <a>,
and the <u> is what would be expected of the collapse of the roundness of
the <o> (because making
for the <u> a smaller circle than the one for the <o> would be not enough to
distinguish them).

All that is sometimes more clearly seen in handwriting. I hope that i have
given enough explanations
to see what i mean by graphical symbolism of the letters. I would like to
remember here that corean
alfabet "hangul" was invented as a system graphicaly symbolizing tonge
positions, mouth and throat,
so that graphical symbolism shouldn't be a strange though for linguistics.
But roman alfabet symbolism
would have to be a trait got without clear conscience of it trough the
evolution of writing.

So, i would like to know if you know any study or bibliography about that
subject and if you have
though or fund that kind of symbolism.

I think it would be usefull for making a phonetic alfabet with graphic
symbolism motivated
in human psicology rather than increasing the number of arbitrary symbols.

And is a suggestion for making new letters and, or, alfabets to make them
with graphic
symbolism.

Yours,

Mariano

Santander - Cantabria