By JACK GODBEY

Community columnist

I have always been interested in language. Basically, the written word is nothing more than a bunch of strange symbols that, when put together, form a word that stands for some emotion or feeling that we want to portray. This is the basis of language, and my fascination began a long time ago when I first learned the alphabet. 

My regular readers know that I often think about strange things, and once again I found myself lost in thought about language and I came to a realization that the letters of the alphabet can act a lot like people, each with their own personality. I may have been in a stupor from eating too much chocolate when I had that thought but I had it just the same. 

For example, we all know people who act like vowels. The vowel people, like the letters, show up everywhere and are involved in everything and think that no one can get by without them. The word just will not be the same without their divine presence. In direct contrast are the X people. X people struggle with their own identity and crave attention so much that X people will commonly take on any role that is put upon them. They will gladly stand in to help form the word Christmas whenever asked just to be seen and will pretend to be a Z the rest of the time. They even moonlight in algebraic formulas to get attention. 

Then we have the M people. M people are a bit lazy. The sound of M can be made without even opening your lips. M people are happy with making their sounds with as little work as possible. 

There are those that act like the letter Q as well. Q people have very little ability of their own and they seem to be dependent on others, especially U to feel useful. As long as they are with U, who hangs with the other important vowels, they think they can do anything. However, once left to their own devices to stand on their own two feet they are not able to.

W is the only letter in the alphabet that takes more than one syllable to pronounce. W people require a lot of effort to accommodate them. They are important to the word and they know it, and what’s worse, they want you to know it as well. I think many celebrities are W people.

P people love to work and need little recognition for it. The P people can take the lead and stand at the front of a word and be effective, or they work well with others and can even team up with H people to do the same job as F people, who likely didn’t show up for work. Thanks to strong people like P who team up with H to get the job done, you never miss F.

C people are just sad. They try to hang out with other letters and appear to have it together, but at the end of the day they have nothing to say and have to go around making K sounds just to make an impact.

 Z people, on the other hand, are unique and exciting. They don’t appear a lot, but when they do, they make a big impact on things around them. Z is so cool that half the time, X people pretend to be them.

The question is, which letter are you? For me, it may be time to seek counseling, or at least lay off the chocolate.