Re: Optimum number of symbols

In a message dated 05/19/2002 05.21.45 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:

>Tim May wrote:
>> There are cursive and semicursive styles of Chinese and Japanese
>> calligraphy using logograms, too, although they seem rather hard to
>> decipher.
>
>I'm under the impression that most Chinese and Japanese people find them
>illegible too.  :-)  In those cases, artistic considerations take
>precedence of considerations of legibility.
    Yepyep... "Running Grass" Style Chinese calligraphy is IMVHO intensely
beautiful, but even my father says it takes _years_ to even attempt to read
"that scribble" and many years more to even write it at a rank beginner's
level [he is not impressed with this particular style; he prefers some other
style that is - to me - rather kludgey-looking, entirely too readible and
"too modernistic" and which specific name escapes me].

----------------------------------------------------------

    Interesting/amusing perspective on language: The poet/translator Gary
Snyder describes language as "naturally evolved wild systems"... "So language
does not impose order on a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness
back."

Hanuman Zhang {HANoomaan JAHng} /'hanuma~n  dZahN/

~§~

_Ars imitatur Naturam in sua operatione._ <from Latin> = "Art is the
imitation of Nature in her manner of operation." " The most beautiful order
is a heap of sweepings piled up at random." ~ Heraclitus, c. 500 BCE

~§~ jinsei to iu mono wa, kinchou na geijyutsu to ieru deshou ~§~
<from Japanese> = lit. "one can probably say that 'life' is a precious
artform")