updated January 20 1:20 pm 2003      Ed Ackerman 
Letters
live with us,
        from the time we first learn to read, to the writing of our last will and testament.  How is it that just twenty six little letters can represent the sounds of the human voice? How is it possible that letters can make up all syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books, filling up every library, expressing all human thought? 
Who are these twenty six characters?

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz


Concept:
The letters of the alphabet
are the characters of a story. 
    Each letter is an individual character, but the assignment of a personality to these elemental symbols of intellect can hardly be a random act. The closer we make the personality traits of the letters to the actual behavioral traits of the letters within the English language, the more valuable and resonate the entire experience will be. This project is for pre-literate children in their formative years, and at the same time is for adults well versed in literature.
    The script, animation and other media forms of this presentation will be built on a series of assumptions and rules.

Assumption #1
    Each letter of the alphabet has a sole, an undestructable eturnal spirit. Each letter has a personality, and a social position (that can change).  Each letter has aspirations, opinions, responsibilities and a history.

Assumption #2
    LETTERS ARE NOT NUMBERS!  Unlike the world of numbers, the letters of the alphabet are NOT equal in status and the alphabet is NOT a fair place.

Assumption #3
    Letters are always in service to the narrator.

Assumption #4
    The spirit of a letter is animate.  The spirit of a letter moves, makes sounds and speaks. The typed representation of a letter is inanimate; just a footprint of the sole.  Although a word for example may have three a’s in it only one letter a can represent the live spirit of the letter a.  An a can make an identical copy of itself but cannot have an animated conversation with another a (itself).

Determining Environmental Factors 
(In the assignment of personality to each letter.)
1) The grapheme (graphic design of the letter).
For example: the letter s looking somewhat like a snake or a string, may be possibly be a slippery character.
2) The phoneme sounds of the letter in speech. 
3) English language usage (letter occurrence statistics).
4) Positioning within words (beginning middle or end)
5) Associations with other letters (prefixes suffixes). 
6) The meaning of the words that the letter is at the   beginning of. 
For example: 
    a is for apple,(and hundreds of common words) 
    x is for hardly anything. Even words beginning with
    the ‘x’ sound like extra and exclude do not
    start with an x).


Other examples of determining factors for personality:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
(alphabetic order)

etaoinsrhlducfmwygpbvkxjqz
Usage in English (by order of occurrence)
(The Scrabble point system is based on this order)




From our knowledge of reading we know that
there are vowels,

eaoiu and y
(by order of occurrence)

and consonants.

tnsrhldcfmwygpbvkxjqz
(by order of occurrence)

  The letter e is obviously the most popular letter and the most popular vowel.  The letter t is the second most popular letter and the most popular consonant. The letter y is a social butterfly moving back and forth between being a vowel and being a consonant.

  The alphabet harbors many partnerships. The letter q for example doesn’t get out much. The letter q is the second least popular letter.  When the letter q does form words it hangs around with the letter u, (the least popular vowel).  In this relationship the u lets the q lead. What a couple of losers.

  The sound that a letter can make is called a phoneme.  Sound will be of the utmost importance.  THIS PROJECT IS NOT A BOOK.  The phonemes, will splish, splash, and slposh the letters to life.  The letter a for example has eight different phonemes: “how versatile”, the letter b has only one: “how unique”.

  Most letters belong to social groups that have regular meetings.  The letter a for example belongs to the following social clubs: able, age, al, an, ian, ean, ance, ancy, ant, ate, ary, anti, and trans. The letter b only belongs to the clubs able, ible, and sub.