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in the ALPHABET
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Man standing on a rock shaped like a the head of a sleeping giant. Yachats, Oregon. Celeste Horner
A Lost Key Found in Water
More water word examples welled up and overflowed. Wade, wilt, swim, weep, snow, and dew. Row your boat. Draw water from a well. So many words related to water had a W. Was this a coincidence?
Oregon coast. C Horner
Como unda onda do mar
WALALATAA great geyser of discovery erupted when I read "walalata," a Hopi word for water. I had an instant, intuitive connection to the meaning. All of my language instincts rushed into play. Each syllable spoke to me. The first, "wa," which sounded like water, and looked like a wave. "Lala" felt like tongues waving and playing, liking "ta," terra, the land, like the sea sweeping the shore. Also "ta" ressembled like "esta" in Spanish, and seemed like an expansive state of being. My hypothesis was confirmed as I read further Gregg Braden's discussion of Language, Thought, and Reality [x], the work of linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. I was preparing for his March 2015 workshop in Sedona. * This passage in the The Divine Matrix [] [] contemplated how language influences the mind. The Hopi word "walalata," I learned, confirming my hypothesis, was about water. "Walalata," a word which rolls off the tongue, embraced the joyful, shimmering play of an undulating surface of water, a collaborative merging of many ripples. I thought it was such a beautiful and fluidly expressive word!
Hokusai. Great Wave off Kanagawa
CRACKING A CODEIt was really surprising to have a flash insight into Hopi, because it was one of the languages deemed cryptic enough to be used as a code during World War II. If I could crack, or accidently wander through an ancient, vine-shrouded, hidden back door of a battle-tested cipher, what else could I decode? Was it possible to overcome the international communication barriers with the alphabet symbolism key?
W in WORDS FOR WATER around the WORLDI began to think about words for water around the world. I was born in New York, but raised in Quebec during my elementary school years, so first, I thought about the French word for water. "Eau", pronounced "ohw" has a subtle w sound. In Spanish, water is "agua," pronounced "ahgwa." The w appears again. The Hawaiian and Maori, with ancient sea-faring cultures, both have the same word for water: "Wai!" W is associated with water in Chinese as well. Delving into the mysteries of Chinese, I learned that water is "shui," pronounced "shway." Again, W has a role. Surprisingly, studying Chinese taught me something about English! I noticed that the Chinese word combined both W, and "shhhh", which captures the sound of water. This helped me to recognize the link between sh and water, in English words like wash, swish, flush, fish, and shore. The connection between water and W is overwhelming. W looks like a wave, and also represents the shhh sound that sounds like water! The Hebrew letter ש shin, which makes the sh sound, and the Chinese word 山 shan for mountain both look like a W! W is connected to water both by looking like a wave, and representing the rushing sound of water! Native American LanguagesWhen I discovered the key, I was living in Eugene, Oregon. It's a lovely, culturally-vibrant college town with bikers and joggers streaming along the rose-garden and tree-lined bike paths next the Willamette river. The name of the Willamette river is derived from the Kalapuya indian word Whilamut, meaning, "where the water ripples and flows faster." Similarly, Walla Walla, Washington is derived from a Native American expression meaning "place of many waters," since it is at the conjunction of the Snake and Columbia rivers. The name of Waikiki in Hawaii means spouting water. So even among indigenous Americans, there is an association between W and water!
Willamette River. Eugene, OR. C. Horner Whilamut is a Kalapuya Native American word for "where the water ripples and flows faster."
Egyptian hieroglyphs and more
If you turn W upside down, you get an M, and even more words for water pour out! English examples are marine, marsh, melt, and moisture. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the word for water is "mw." The Hebrew word for waters is "mayim." In Arabic, water is "ma'an." The French word for sea in "mer." In Spanish, sea is "mar." A Chinese word for flood is "mo." The Japanese word for water is "mizu!" The African language of Yoruba uses "omi" as the word for water.
The W water symbolism is a powerful key. It creates a bridge of understanding across multiple languages, and even works upside down or cut in half. The letter U, half a W, illustrates a tongue of falling water in pour, gush, liquid, liquor, aquatic, and the Chinese word for rain, Yu.
A Splash of Language InsightWith this key, I began to see relationships between words that I had never seen before. I saw how many English words that had a "w", or had the w-sound, like liquid, and aquatic, were related to water.
I had to reflect about wax, but then I realized, it's a water barrier. In wax: WA stands for water, X is exclusion. World? Our planet is mostly covered by water. Words? Fluent prose flows like water.
Click to see the splash! Words-in-Bloom companion website. Animated analysis of the words "now" A Splash of NowI noticed that the word "now" ended with W. I was puzzled about what it had to do with water. The etymology of the word "now" in the dictionary, traced to Latin nunc, was un-enlightening. Why does it mean what it does? It has a w. Is it related to water? Suddenly, I realized that a splash of water takes the shape of a W. Frozen in a moment, a crown-shaped splash sprays O-shaped droplets. A column of water jets up in the center of the splash. This column, or finger of water is represented by the letter n, the tip of the index finger pointing up. Each letter in n-o-w describes part of this splash, frozen in the moment of NOW!
Wow! A splash of insight!
Towards Global UnderstandingDiscovery of the symbolism of the alphabet has changed my life. Words bloom with new vividness and animation. Meaning emerges from the symbolism of each letter. I now see each letter as the nucleus of a constellation of meanings. Knowing the key feels like having a super-power of x-ray vision, because foreign words that should be unintelligible make natural sense. I hope to share this technique to make international communication easier, and promote world peace through cultural exchange and appreciation.
| Map Hidden Symbols in the Alphabet Celeste Claire Horner 2023-11-5, 2023-9-30, 2022-8-10 (Waikiki), 2022-3-1, 2021-8 |
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