Re: Optimum number of symbols

Mike S. scripsit:

> Likewise, the Spanish tilde only marks one grapheme
> --arguably phonetic but hardly productive.
In fact n~ is a reduced form of nn.

> The German umlaut
> *seems* like a phonetic marker--until we learn that a"u
> is pronounced [OI].  What's that all about?
Actually not: the lip-rounding persists throughout the diphthong, so it's [OH].

> In short, *very* few modern alphabetic have implemented any
> phonetic markers productively, and *no* alphabet relies heavily
> on phonetic markings in a systematic way.
Well, in Hungarian, ' is productively length, and " is productively
rounding, and '' is used when both are present.

> You can learn the sounds of combinations of letters such as "ka"
> and "th" just as easily as as you can learn those of syllabics.
> But I'll tell you what you can't do.  Upon seeing a new syllabic,
> you can *not* guess what it sounds like.
In true syllabaries, no.  But true syllabaries are fairly rare: Yi, hira/katakana,
and Cherokee are the only ones in Unicode 3.2.  The rest are alphabets,
abjads, abugidas, and Han morpho-syllabic script.

--
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_