Re: Optimum number of symbols

Nik Taylor:
> Raymond Brown wrote:
> > 1. What is the optimum number of symbols?
>
> I'd say it would depend on the language.  A language with a simple
> phonology and simple syllables is well-suited to a syllabry, but a
> language like English with a more complex phonology would be impossible
> to have a syllabry, altho a syllabic alphabet might work, or perhaps
> using symbols to represent common consonant clusters.  So, say, one
> symbol per phoneme plus symbols for things like "st", "sp", "sk", "sn"
> "sl" "fl" "tr" "str", etc., as well as "kt", "ks", "lp", etc.  That
> would probably number a couple hundred or so, just as a guesstimate.
An alternative for English, if extra characters were to become
available, would be to assign them to whichever letter sequences
would give the best compression rate. Does anybody know if any
shorthands have done that?

--And.