Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 16:54:51 -0500 From: Peter Lai <PeterL@resnet.uconn.edu> To: 'Mike Meyer ' <mwm@mired.org>, 'Cliff Sarginson ' <cliff@raggedclown.net> Cc: "'questions@freebsd.org '" <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Tyr'd with all this pronunciation thread Message-ID: <9F36E367710D474E9806AA393FE737FB019EF3@resnetnt.resnet.uconn.edu>
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well with all of us being geeks, i'm sure we could elicit the help of Dr. Noam Chomsky from MIT and help build a new international langauge that follow precise rules (e.g. that of a computer language) in syntax and structures. Something that makes sense to the brain. French is all neat and good, but way too many things in it that break the rules and there is a lot of redundancy. Chinese seems to be very very well suited for efficiency, but it's written part is to say the least, a major obstacle, even to the point of stifling creativity (the people, having to memorize the language, aren't trained to reason out, per se, why some is. To them, it just is.). Some of its benefits include minimal redundancy (if the context you are in definately signifies plural, why attache plural suffixes to the words? similarly, there is no gender differentiation for each object). There are also the large usage of "homonyms" with `inflectionary' differences, which determine the meaning. For example, the same movement of the mouth and tongue are used to pronounce "dead" and "crap" in mandarin, but they sound differently and mean different things. Furthermore, most definition clues are detected in the context stream, and not based on a word-by-word analysis. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Meyer To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: questions@freebsd.org Sent: 12/2/2000 4:20 PM Subject: Re: Tyr'd with all this pronunciation thread Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> types: > Anyway. It's the only international language we have, so > you are stuck with it my friends. No, it isn't. I'm not sure what the current status of Russian is in the former warsaw pact countries, but it used to occupy the same position as English in them. Chinese would be a better choice - there are more chinese speakers than any other language in the world. English is the most popular language in the world as a second (or maybe it's third) language. Of course, none of those three are really international languages. They are national languages that dominate some fields because of the dominance - either political or just in the field - of some country that speaks them. German and Latin both used to be in that position, but have fallen out of favor. There are true international languages, but they don't have enough acceptance to be worth doing translations for. Of course, once one is done, you'd have a major in with the people who have bothered to learn them. Anyone want to start a translation project for either Loglan or Esperanto? <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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