¡Hello! I have recently joined this forum. I am Spanish, I have been in Japan and
have studied japanese but now I like to think that I am studiuos of language although I do it
at home, by my self.
I have noticed that at least in Spanish seams to happen a graphic symbolism
of the letters. So:
i. letters that are read as explosives (or stop, interrupted, non-continuous)
almost all of them have a vertical stroke: < t, p, k; d, b, g > and of these those that are
voiced have all a round stroke <d, b, g>.
ii. letters that are fricative and voiceless (wich sounds are continuous and irregular)
have forms mainly ondulatory or zigzag: < s, f, z, j >
iii. letters that are consonant and vowel have a mixed stroke of line and lace: < l, r >
iv. nasals are that are continuous and voiced (its sound is regular o harmonic) look like
a horizontal line whose vértical strokes are just to make explicit them and its lengh: < m, n >
v. vowels that are all of them more or less voiced do not have any vértical stroke and
vary around the shape of a round closed stroke.
< i > that is with < u > more near to consonants than the other vowels have round shape flat. And its
point signals that is a front high, and as one can see in a spectrogram has a very high second formant.
< e > is less high and less frontal than the reading of < i >, something betwen < i > and < a > as are
their shapes.
< a > is a low central vowel, that would be the prototipic vowel.
< o > is more high and more backwards than the reading of < a >
< u > is more high (as high as the reading of < i >) and more backwards than any other
Spanish vowel. It could be said that the round shape of the < o > has collapsed (as making
a smaller < o > would not have had sens).
I think that it is possible to explain by different reasons like histórical changes and introduction
of new letters why happend exceptions, like that in Spanish < c > has to readings /k/ and /(theta)/,
but I do not want to extend more the explanation.
I am interested in knowing about that, that I call "graphic symbolism" -a parallel
of the compoun phonic simbolism-. The kind of simbolism I have noticed is not that with
meaning like in jerogliphics or logogliphics but a simbolic relationship between a letter and the
sound its read on it. It is near, but different, to the korean alfabet symbolism. While in korean
the symbolism that links a letter graph and its phonetic reading was and invention of Sejong,
what means that was intended from the beginning but what I supose is under graphic simbolism
in the roman alfabet (at least in its Spanish usage) can not be explained in that way, but may
be as an evolutionary change psychologicaly caused, so an may be quite unconscious process.
I do not think that I know all that could be explained, not other simbolic relationships
between letters strokes and phonetics, nor what happens in others languages and alphabets. So
if you know and want to share it, or if you know web sites or books about this subject I would
like to know.