From: Roly Sookias (rolysookias@talk21.com)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2002 - 18:18:12 MST
(ages ago) Yash said:
"I agree with the need for simplification. Things like 'Cherish' and
'Character' do seem odd.
The simplifications would not make the language unreadable IMHO, it would
just take some time for people to adopt the new ways of spelling.
The formula for calculating the area of a circle is quite simple. As is the
one for its circumference. You wouldn't need a formula for a dog, of course.
The real breakthrough can come in how you succeed in compressing the maximum
of stuff in a small paragraph or sentence.
Your arguments are quite fine, don't be surprised you don't get much of an
answer:
1. during these festive times when many are on holiday and too happy not to
touch anything computer-like.
2. if your ideas are of a revolutionary and inventive nature. According to
Kuhn, people only really change fast after a critical mass of adoption is
reahced (paradigm shift).
And altogether, many are pretty miffed not to have had these ideas
themselves and to cover up their own latent feelings of worthlessness they'd
do everything not to encourage you.
Yash."
I reply:
Sorry Yash, I didn't get your response to my language thing until very
recently for some reason despite the fact that you sent it on the 30/12!
I do agree about the compressed language idea (as you know)- it would be
by far the best way of communication, although I fear that space on a page
and ease of pronunciation may not go together that well. Anyway, if such an
excellent language (with mathematical and astronomical formulae in there
too) were to be devised it would have to be done by a large committee and
very slowly and logically. I feel that these qualities are very important as
I have seen far to many "one man jobs" such as Esperanto and Novial which
can by no means be said to be fully logical (!!!) and if a language is to
adopted globally then it would have to be clear that it was the best job
that could be done and not just accepted (like English for example) because
it is popular or similar to popular languages. For this reason I do like the
idea of the lojban tongue, although it is clearly not a full solution!
For the time being I really do feel that rationalised spelling is needed
and that a few extra characters are certainly needed in the roman alphabet
(which was, after all, only meant for latin) or a whole other system could
be used. The IPA is all well and good, but to write it in joined up
handwriting is a whole other matter, this is where I think real progress
could be made. A new phonetic character system must be divised that is
practical to use (both for handwriting, typing and carving/engraving) , easy
to learn and accurate. This is by all accounts a tall order! I have had a go
at a simple revision of the alphabet, mainly for the european languages that
I know (including Ido!), and have found the greatest difficulty to be
finding distinctive new symbols that are clearly legible when hand written,
are angular enough (or have angular enough capital versions) to be easy to
carve and are not used for some other purpose (eg: maths!). Any suggestions
for symbol shapes are VERY welcome - please email any images to my email
(duh!).
Thanks for your time. Best to you all. Vale.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:38 MDT