Phonetics and language/symbol manipulation

I was driving around checking things out around Lake Tahoe today thinking about language and phonetics and symbols.

north
south

west
east

notice the phonetic similarity. I have a feeling you could structure the "th" and "st" in ways that would describe a physical symbol in other languages. Sun cross comes to mind.

Also, if you notice Thai and Vietnamese... Frequently attractive words in one language are phonetically ugly in the other. For example, the word "pretty" in Vietnamese is "dung" in English. I don't think that's random. Who was in charge of assigning Arabic lettering to Vietnamese? Whoever it was deliberately sabotaged it to ensure maximum cultural conflict. Same goes for Thai. I wonder if the languages are more related than everyone realizes. Phonetics.