If Letters Were People

Instructional videos made for kids often present letters as cartoon characters that can walk and talk. This helps grab the attention of young learners and keep them interested as they learn their alphabet. It also makes it easier for kids to remember what they learned. As a teacher, it comes naturally to me to personify letters, especially when I am teaching very young kids.

However, what if we took the personification of letters to another level. Do letters have personalities? Do the shapes of certain letters resemble certain personality patterns? Here is what the shapes of some Amharic letters make me think of, what I imagine their personalities would be like if these letters were people. 

1) Home

ሀ ሁ ሂ ሃ ሄ ህ ሆ

በ ቡ ቢ ባ ቤ ብ ቦ

These letter families are similar in that they have two vertical strokes and an opening either at the top or the bottom. ሀ and በ, in general, strike me as plain and boring. This might be because they don’t have any twists or compartments like other Amharic letters; they seem easy to make because they don’t have a lot going on with their shape.

ሀ also makes me think of a pit, or a valley, or an ocean. It looks very calm, just taking it all in, being patient. The opening at the top makes me think of expressions like “no limit”, “there is a way out of the pit/ the bottom”. Once you leave that pit you can be free… However, you can always come back to hide in the valley, it will always be there for you, and whenever you want to leave and spread your wings, you can. So ሀ feels like home, plain and boring; everything interesting happens elsewhere, but that is where you go when you need to rest, re-set, and re-start. Coincidentally (or not), it is the first letter in the Amharic Fidel. 

በ on the other hand makes me feel restricted, it feels like a sign telling me “you can go as low as you want, but there is a limit to how high you can go”. On the other hand, በ also looks like the horizon, a goal you set, a hope you look forward to, but still a limit. It also feels like a dome, a protection that you can shelter in. It can remind you of a house, a shelter.

ሀ and በ seem like fitting symbols for great parents. They are our starting point and our limit. They protect us and support us. They let us fly and spread our wings, but they are there for us when we come home. We think we can fly high, and come to realize the truthfulness in their words. After flying so high, we realize the truth in their counsel. Once we hit that “limit” we come back down. There is often not much beyond what they tell us is there. We try to go higher than their thinking, but through our efforts we eventually realize, they had all the wisdom we ever needed. So we come back down from our high horses and start looking up to them and their words as we realize we can’t grow higher than them. No matter how high we fly, we will always realize we could not have achieved any of it without them shaping us. So no matter how high up we fly, we realize we will always look up to them. They are our starting point, and they are our limit.

2) Everything is not what it seems.

The rest of the ሀ family looks uncomfortable to me, especially ሂ ሃ ሄ. They all seem pretentious, trying too hard. They seem like they are deep, but they are in fact shallow. They seem like they are grounded but their foundation is smaller than what they have built on top. They look like they will collapse any minute.

ሄ is a little different from the other two. There is more to ሄ … It looks like what is going on at the top is different from what is going on at the bottom. Open at the top, enclosed at the bottom. It reminds me of people who open up to you only halfway and don’t let you into the other half of themselves. They have something bottled up inside, hidden away from their visible personality. They are even trickier than ሃ the top part of which is identical to ሄ. With ሃ, what they reveal to you (what is at the top) is all there is to them. But ሄ is different. While you are inclined to believe whatever they reveal to you is all there is to know about them, if you look on the other side of their personality, deep down they have something hidden. That hidden something can be either good or bad. It reminds me of the happy-looking people who keep traumatic experiences hidden deep down, and people who seem to have a frivolous personality, but once you get to know them, they turn out to be deep thinkers and caring souls.

ሚ ማ ሜ ም ሞ

These personalities look like they have a lot going on in their lives but they don’t have a very good support system or a rich inner life. They look like they will collapse soon under all the load they are carrying on their head. They are interesting people; they have curves and compartments within their personalities. They are excited about too many things, spreading themselves too thin, or swamped in endless, cyclical work routines. No matter how interesting and full they may seem, they are bound to “collapse” because their “foundation”, their support system is weak. Or maybe, their inner lives are not strong or rich enough to accommodate all that is going on in their external lives.

3) Balance

ሐ ሑ ሒ ሓ ሔ ሕ ሖ

ወ ዉ ዊ ዋ ዌ ው ዎ

መ ሙ ሚ ማ ሜ ም ሞ

ሐ,  ወ, and መ remind me how much I like symmetry. Maybe it is because it reminds me of balance. Especially, ሐ strikes me as balanced and grounded. It reminds me of the people who at first look like they don’t have much to offer and don’t reveal much about themselves, or don’t like to stand out. That is because deep down they are well-rooted, balanced, and steady. They are the calm, dependable people that don’t always enjoy the limelight and are content being the solid roots that everybody needs.

ወ and መ also strike me as balanced because of their symmetry. They remind me of people who are willing to consider the “other” point of view and try to see some value in each of the opposing views they are faced with. These people are also grounded. No part of them is “hanging in the air”.

On the other hand, ሐ, ወ, and መ could resemble people with hypocritical and opportunistic personalities. They are two-faced. Especially ሐ reminds us of the movement on a pendulum, a person that keeps going back and forth and has no consistent values.

ሓ and ሖ make me think of progress and backward movement, whichever way you want to look at them (left to right, or right to left). They make me think of growth because they seem as if they have a long leg that grew after two “failed” tries. Each of them also looks like a person that is leaping forward (or backward) while carrying a heavy load on its back. Personality-wise they remind me of people who carry “baggage” from their past while trying to move forward and grow.

ጠ ጡ ጢ ጣ ጤ ጥ ጦ

ጠ looks grounded and symmetric like ሐ ወ and መ but it looks plain and boring. It is grounded and balanced and not pretentious. But, it does not have that one stroke that makes it stand out from the others like ሐ does. Or it does not have as many curves as ወ and መ do. ወ and መ look like they will be fun to travel inside of, they remind me of the excitement on a roller coaster. In contrast, ጠ seems to have limited routes. ጠ is balanced but boring.

ጨ ጩ ጪ ጫ ጬ ጭ ጮ

ጨ has that fun, excitement component that ጠ seems to lack. The little circles at the bottom remind me of wide eyes. It reminds me of people who are fun and have a sparkle of mischief in their eyes.

What do these letters look like to you? Imagination is the key ;)