Ygyde and philosophical languages

>> Andrew Nowicki wrote:
>> AN> A perfect language should be easy to pronounce,
>> AN> easy to understand, and easy to learn.
>>Unfortunately, these three things are not absolute measures. A Mandarin
>>speaker finds any language with any inflection at all troublesome to
>>learn, but speakers of European languages have no trouble with simple
>>inflectional systems. OTOH, speakers of most European langs finds tones
>>impossible to manage, yet they are second nature to Mandarin speakers.
>
> Agreed. As Teoh said, what's good for one isn't good for all, so I doubt
>you'll get agreement on this. But some things are more appropriate than
>others. I imagine most people in the world would not find a tonal clicking
>language to be easy to pronounce. 
 They probably wouldn't! Especially if they had to make the clicks 
simultaneous with the vowels the way so many real click languages do. But 
taking away the tones (recognized by speakers of many Asian languages) and 
taking away inflections (recognized by speakers of Indo-European languages 
or, say, Navajo) are not the same thing. You could express just the same 
things with exactly the same meanings if you created a language without tones 
rather than with tones. But if you dropped the inflections, you'd 
fundamentally change the semantics of the language. Things would be freed 
from having to indicate whether they took place in the present or the future, 
whether they were single or multiple, etc. which could change the whole 
worldview behind the new language. It would also be possible for less to be 
expressed if there weren't enough words like "yesterday" or "sometimes" or 
"constantly" to translate the whole range of meanings used in inflectional 
languages. If instead of simply "inflection" (in the sense of suffixes and 
prefixes), you say "indication of tense, voice, mood..." then the change is 
even more drastic and the language becomes expressively limited.

>Imagine if you have problems distinguishing |y| from |i| in Ygyde. This
>will be the case for perhaps the majority of the world's people, who make no
>such distinction in their own languages. Some interesting homophonies
>exist:
 I'm going to guess that you mean the "y" in Ygyde, similar to /I/, rather 
than the IPA /y/ like the German "ü" sound, since "ü" and "i" don't sound 
much alike to me but immigrants often use "i" for "I", or vice versa. The 
sounds sound fairly crisp and in fact I used them both to increase syllable 
power in a unambiguous language project I was trying once, but you could 
choose to avoid them because while they're in the process of getting used to 
English I've heard about immigrants mispronouncing the English words "sheet", 
or "beach", or "peace".

>And your pronuciation of |o| as the vowel of "all" or "saw" is just as bad.
>I'd change that to the vowel of "know" or "ode".
 Definitely! That vowel sound is clearly distinguished from any other vowel 
in the inventory.

> But if it's the same as in
>"saw", most people would consider that the same as the vowel of "hot". And
>then you've got even more trouble.
 I interpret the "all" or "saw" vowel sound as meaning it has that "w" glide 
at the end -- like the sound people make at something disappointing. (Or, 
come to think of it, something really cute . . .) Like the vowel sound in 
"port", just without an R after it. "Hot", on the other hand, mind be 
interpreted as a pure /a/ . . . like you scream when you put your hand on the 
stove and it's accidentally turned on. I remember being taught when I was 9 
than the Russian letter "o" sounds like the "o" in "pot", from a book 
(probably one of my parents' "German/Danish/Norwegian/whatever for 
Travellers" guides from Berlitz), so when reading Russian I went around 
pronouncing as "o" as indistinguishable from "a". After I continually heard 
the "o" in "hope" instead whenever I would get to hear actual Russian spoken, 
I finally realized I had gotten it all wrong. It was such trouble trying to 
relearn it whenever I was reading Cyrillic characters (which at least I 
hadn't had to do very often).

>backward = curved
>captain = economist
>fat = spicy
 "What do you do for a living?" "I'm an ataca." But it still wouldn't be as 
bad as North vs. South America.

>Then there is the matter of definitions. A great number of your defined
>words are not very clear, or even inaccurate.
>
>"vomit = verb outer food" is a very good definition.
>
>"cross = noun religious shape" is almost ridiculous. The shape of a
>cross is far too common to be restricted to religious use, which is what is
>happening here.
 Actually, if I saw it, I'd think it would mean any geometric shape that has 
religious significance attached to it. Like a mandala would be a "religious 
shape" (mandalas are what come immediately to mind, in fact).

>"bluxberry = noun cold middle food" is particularly interesting. I
>don't think there's anything especially cold about bluxberries, and I don't
>understand why they'd be "middle".
 Well, he defines a fruit from a shrub as a "middle food" and a fruit from a 
tree as a "top food", so I think it has to do with this food being lower than 
fruit from the treetops. Cold? Probably has to do with the popularity of 
freezing blueberries, but it could just as well be frozen cranberries.

>"hockey = noun slippery disk" sounds more like a gasket or a flat
>bearing.
 Sounds to me like this should refer to the <i>puck</i> rather than the 
hockey game.

"angel = noun attractive religious craftsman" makes me think that you
don't have the slightest idea what an angel is, except that it's somehow
"religious". Anything closer to "mxssenger of God" would be perfect.

>Imagine if we had a root word like |ta| meaning "tall". It might go well
>with |gu| "animal" as |guta| "giraffe", but it wouldn't be very useful with
>|si| "food". 
Si-ta? I think that would mean "tall food". :)

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