Re: Optimum number of symbols

Mike S. scripsit:

> I don't quite agree.  First of all, alphabets are not nearly universally
> used.  Secondly, the only people we gave an alphabet were the people
> who did not have any writing at all.  The Japanese, Chinese, etc. all
> still have their indigenous non-alphabetic writing systems.
Well, the Vietnamese used to have a Chinese-style morpho-syllabic writing
system, but gave it up in favor of Latin.  The Tagalog language was once
written with an abugida (see my list) but now uses Latin script.
Turkish used to use an abjad (Arabic script) but now uses Latin script.
Mongolian switched for many years from their native abjad to Cyrillic,
but are now in the process of switching back (with great damage to the
phonemic principle: the Cyrillic script was quite phonemic, whereas the
abjad reflects the pronunciation of Ghengis Khan's time, and had lots of
ambiguities even then).

> Furthermore, I doubt it was ever very likely that morphemic systems
> were going to become universally used, and that's not just because
> the Chinese didn't take over the world.
True.  Only Japanese and Chinese continue to use hanzi-based scripts;
there is very limited use in Korea, and even more limited scholarly use
in Vietnam.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_