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Numerology & "Letterology"

From:Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Date:Monday, February 3, 2003, 4:05
I don't believe in numerology, astrology, or related -ologies, but I
thought it might be fun to add something similiar to the conculture
surrounding my conlang.  :)  A minority group (which I think might be
geographically centered, rather than scattered geographically but
concentrated, say, socio-economically) believes that the "personalities" of
the letters that make up your name (and other words) have meaning and
affect things.

There is (or, more accurately, there will be) a children's story involving
all the letters of the alphabet.  Each letter has a name it's called by in
the story, separate from the sound-name -- eg, the first letter <g> is
simply |gih| /gI/, but it also has the nickname |Gilek|, which means
"lonely."  This could be used to make clear which letter you mean --

A:  "Che'emaeliv ne gih."        (Write G.)
     /tSe"meilIv nE gI/
B:  "Ne ghih?"                   (Gh?)
    /nE xI/
A:  "Kre.  Ne gih, ne Gilek."    (No.  G, the Lonely One.)
    /krE  nE gI  nE gI"lEk/

Like radio-names for Roman letters -- C is Charlie, F is Foxtrot, etc.

Anyhow, these nicknames would be standard, known and excepted by everyone,
because they're part of a widely used children's story for learning the
alphabet.  But a small group took this letter-nickname-personality thing to
the next level and decided that entire words had personalities based on the
individual letters that made up the word.

I'm imagining that they would have very complex, etabnannimous rules wrt
divining the total meaning of a word.  I would give examples, but I would
first have to know the individual letters' personalities, and so far I only
vaguely know about G and K.  I'll keep you guys posted, of course.  ;)

So, comments?  Similar conlang-related conculture weirdness in other
people's works?


--
AA

Replies

Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>[despammed] Numerology & "Letterology"
Sarah Marie Parker-Allen <lloannna@...>
Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>