Perhaps this is a rule-of-thumb for human behavior. Faster ways to communicate and travel. Higher densities in dwelling. Maybe English spelling should reviews its redundant letters and get a UNIFON (not an acronym)-like script.

And, ah, lower case is so informal, so pleasant to look at, like a typed letter, a primary reader, or a poem (especially by e.e.cummings) or a blog i.d.. much less stressful than capital letters. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! RSVP!

Acronyms are not as personal as seeing the whole word, though. But then if we use them enough, the acronym becomes the whole lexical unit that we recognize. The problem also is that you have to say the letters of the acronym one-by-one. It is like s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g a word, instead of saying it.

But how about Hebrew? Do they include vowels in their words? I have seen some websites with G-d for God, as Hebrew leaves out vowels, at least in its word for Yahweh, which is read from right to left. (See another blog entry on this I have at this link stedawa.sulekha.com ). (Why doesn’t the Insert Link button work? Maybe it is not Firefoxed.

Scripts and fonts are so diverse. Thy vn sy tht y cn ndrstnd nglsh wtht vwls. Vowels seem to be as vaporous as the airstream that they are made of. Mysterious, isn’t it? Vowels represent the spirit, events, causation. Consonants represent the world of forms. Objects, ideas, matter, linguistic expression, circuit boards, things, integument. Are consonants the heavyweights, and vowels the featherweights? The vowels are all pure airstreams, spoken and sometimes sung. I think English has about 32 distinct minimal pair vowel sounds, and about 11 consonant sounds. The interrupted airstream of the consonant perhaps in English has fewer possibilities.

But what about other languages? Hawaiian has five long and five short vowels and eight consonants, less than half of the number of sounds that are in English. Esperanto has 5 vowels and 23 consonants, of which two are semivowels.

How are vowels written in other languages? As interspersed add-ons to the consonant character (some in Hindi are like this, I think)? As equal space-takers, with side-by-side importance as consonants? As little diacritical marks above or below beside the consonant character? Are Persian and Arabic like that?

Telegu and Tamil and Thai scripts are quite circular (but still phonetic). I wonder if they have acronyms, too.

Is an acronym a kind of visual macro? The arrangement of letters triggers a subscript procedure in our memories, gets the ATP going, and mentally expanderates the acronym, and quickly and we zips the meaning over to our consciousness or semantic (left side?) part of our brain, and we catch the meaning.