Re: Optimum number of symbols

John Cowan:
> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > I don't think an alphabet lends itself in a trivially easy way to
> > a language with lots of lexically contrastive suprasegmental features
> > such as tone, nasalization and voice quality. Well -- the result may
> > be trivially easy, but the number of characters needed is
> > unsatisfactorily large. (Cf. the numberless threads on this
> > list about romanizations of Chinese.)
>
> I think that results primarily from a prejudice felt by Latin alphabet
> users that going past the Big 26 (or 27 at most) is unacceptable.
> Cyrillic, as Ivan pointed out, is much more willing to accept novel
> characters as needed by newly written languages.
I don't think so. Rather, if you have a very large set of putative
segmental phonemes that are systematically and transparently
derived from a combination of a smaller set of features, a strict
alphabetic approach obscures that underlying phonological system and
requires an unnecessarily large inventory of symbols.

--And.