Talk:Letter symbolism

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Occult Mid‑importance

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Is this page about a coherent concept, and is it notable?

It seems that this article is an uncomfortable amalgam of two concepts, one linguistic and one occult/mystical/historical. On the linguistic side, "letter symbolism" isn't really the right concept; sound symbolism and/or non-arbitrariness of the sign would be more appropriate. So on the linguistic side, I think it's not notable (and there aren't any linguistic citations for this anyway). There is some interesting information here about historical perception of the power of certain letters, so maybe it is a notable concept from that perspective?

Anyone have thoughts on this? I can try to help make this more coherent if it's notable, but I'd rather not spend time on it if people agree it's just an article to delete or merge into another article. Local Internet User (talk) 18:09, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You've identified correctly that on the linguistic level we're abstracting a phonogram away from its original denotation and imbuing it with new ones. I don't think there's meaningfully two separate topics though—since the invention of the alphabet particular significance has accumulated around letters, and much of it happened to be supernatural in disposition.

Agreed also though that the citations are wonky—this article originally got translated from French and I've had it on my watchlist ever since, but I have books sitting in my library that will make it look a lot more reasonable. Remsense ‥ 论 18:13, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll try to add what I know of the linguistic connections (similarities/differences to sound symbolism, mentioning the linguistic history, etc.) when I have time. Local Internet User (talk) 19:12, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll bundle some cites to sources for you or anyone to take a look at if I don't get around to writing from them. Thanks for making me think about this article—which honestly has a lot of potential, to my eyes at least. Remsense ‥ 论 19:15, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]