Re: Optimum number of symbols

i'm risking being trivial here, but i find alphabet way easier to learn (it's
only my own experience though).

learning how to write and how to read are different things and that's what the
french "méthode globale" fails to understand with the catastrophic result
Christophe wrote about. i learned how to write before the reform and i can
witness that we learned "b, a ba", that is, we learned how to WRITE the letters
|b| and |a|, and how to READ the syllable |ba|.

the result is that you learn to read a syllabary of hundreds of syllables while
needing to learn how to write only 40 or so letters (hat is, ç, ô, é included).
the fact that |c| and |a| was a different syllable from |c| and |i| was no
problem: we would recognize and write easily the three letters and assume that
we read two different syllables. i think MNEMOTECHNICS are tremendously
important to ease learning how to write a language.

i found the kanas difficult to learn how to write precisely because there is no
clue btw each other (there are no "b" or "a" to put together) but easy to read.
plenty of students say they can read them easily, but writing them is another
matter. khmer indic alphabet would have been easier, were it not for the similar
shapes of the letters, the number, the position and the double-reading of
vowels. kanjis are easy to recognize but both difficult to write and to read
because their common
components don't help so much. they sometimes help remembering the pronunciation
or the meaning but personally i find it not so obvious. you often say: "this is
the kanji for XXX but i can't read or write it anymore".

i can tell that a system of 200 signs that would not share common components
with each other are going to be long and difficult to learn how to write. so
whatever scholars write about this, i know from experience that i'm better at
learning how to write a linear alphabet written with all vowels although it may
not be easier to read than a logograhic or ideographic system. but other people
may have had a different experience.

Mathias
http://takatunu.free.fr/tunugram.htm