Please do not emanate into the penumbra

Well, I had a long conversation about the social affect of the orthography of singularity in the English language with my parents. (Which would make a great master's thesis for those of you keeping score at home.) They are both versed in linguistics, which is kind of how this came up. Actually, it extended from a conversation about whether "DNA" should be capitalized, whether it is a word or an abbreviation, and whether "indian" can be considered a general type noun rather than a proper noun. (My mom and I were playing Boggle.)

The upshot was that I started wondering about the sociological implications of using single character representations to express singularity. "I", "A", and "1" are the most common expressions of singularity in the English language (as far as I know). Coincidentally, they are all single character symbolizations. Further, they are all upright single character symbolizations. I am wondering whether there has been a latent anthropomorphism on the part of English users in regards to these characters. I remember that on Sesame Street when the dancers would spell words and numbers, "I" and "1" only required one person standing or laying in a very typical human pose to express the appropriate orthographic symbol. As someone who is very visual, I think this had the affect of linking the abstract idea of singularity with very concrete singularity. *The point then* is that this is very peculiar to English. The French, Spanish, German, and as many other languages as I am familiar with all use multiple character symbolizations for the concept of singularity. In French, "I" is "Je", "A" is "Un" and "1" is "1" (because of the shared Roman numeral orthography). Similarly, Spanish uses "Yo", "Un", and "1"

What I'm ultimately trying to set up for is this question: Has the orthography of the English language affected the sociology of English speaking cultures? I think it can be fairly certainly said that English speaking cultures are generally more individualistically minded than non-English speaking cultures. While all cultures contain, recognize, and label individuality, most cultures recognize that as operating within a group. But I think English speaking cultures, at least American culture, have more of a tendency to see indivuality as operating outside of groups. Individuality is equated with singularity moreso than non-English speaking cultures. So is there a causal relationship? I think it would be hard to determine, but there is a certain ease of anthropomorphizing our orthography of singularity that is not so easy in other languages.

Does anyone understand what I'm saying? I'm realizing that this probably means I should be going back to school and getting further into academia since no one in the work-a-day world would ever be bothered by the social implications of the orthography of our language. It's similar to being able to characterize, label, and create an organizational structure based on the sheathing structure that occurs at joints in grass stems. This degree of distinction is just not very useful to the common lexicon of living. You certainly don't need fries with that...

But it sure is fun to think about!!