A Fun Site!

Margo's Magical Letter Page deals with sound symbolism. This is one of the more interesting areas of linguistics these days. This site straddles the line between enthusiastic pursuit of truth and having too much time on one's hands...but hey, who am I to criticize a fellow language geek? Especially if she managed to get academic credit and published books out of it?

Sound meaning does tend to predispose referents, but does not largely determine them. That is, you can't predict what a word will refer to based on its sound, but you can predict that a high percentage of words beginning with /b/ in every language will involve explosions, birth and loud noises. You can also predict that if a word referring to a sound begins with /b/, the sound will either begin abruptly or be very loud or usually both. Sound affects meaning in every word in every language.

Fun stuff! I particularly enjoyed her The Hidden Meaning in Your Name page.