Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

>From: Almaran Dungeonmaster <dungeonmaster@...>
>Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 00:22:40 +0100
>
>There are reasons why not all "phonetic types" as you call them, are used.
>One that was already mentioned is the singal-to-noise ratio. If you want to
>create a perfectly short language, you should use all places and manners of
>articulation for consonants, add some clicks and othe esoteric sounds,
>distinguish 5 different levels of frontness for your vowels, rounded and
>unrounded. So this gives us about 80 consonants and 30 vowels, allowing for
>2400 combinations. Add six tones to this, and you have almost 15,000
>possible CV syllables, which is about as short as it gets. You could
>express
>all basic stuff with one short syllable, and by adding a final consonant
>(CVC), you could make another 1.2 million more esoteric words, all just one
>syllable. You should be able to think really fast in such a language.... if
>you ever manage to learn it!
>
Or we could just pull out that horrid sketch I was working on for my
supertonal language.

Here's some thing you should like Cheng tongxue:

This lang I was sketching a while back has "single oral actions" (I suppose
since I'm STILL not sure what on earth you mean by single oral action) and
tones.  It has no need for long words since there are multitudes of "single
oral actions" *g* available.

There are 9 vowels:
high front
mid front
low front
high central
mid central
low central
high back
mid back
low back

Each of these basic vowels is unrounded.  Each of them can add the feature
+round so you now have 18 sounds.  Each vowel can be short, long or double
long so you now have 54 unique oral actions.  Each of these 54 can be
nasalised so you have 108 "oral actions".  Each of these 108 can be
pronounced in one of four voice qualities so you now have 432.  The you add
one of 13 tones to each of those 432 to get a total of 5616 unique "oral
actions" with out having to remember ANY consonants at all.  That should
make it MUCH easier to think (if you EVER learn to distinguish (mid-central
short round nasal rough-voiced mid-rising) from (low-central short round
nasal rough-voiced mid-rising) in real time.

Of course, the written form, which uses tonal spelling *shivver* requires up
to 7 characters to represent one sound -- EEEKK!!  It's got heptagraphs!

Adam

 > I believe that an international language shall never be invented by a
>single person, it need hard work for linguists
> > arround the world.
>
>Well, we are not interested in that here.
>
> > Or we may say every language has to contribute the so called
>international
>language some
> > thing, step by step. The target may be 1, learning less knowing more. 2,
>having the fast thinking speed.
> > 3. the best copy for all cultures.
>
>I don't want an international language. I like it that there are so  many
>different ones. I want my languages to be ambiguous and not too easy to
>learn. I want them to have a certain feeling, i.e. my elven languages use
>mainly fronted and sharp sounds, and long syllables that end in vowels or
>semi-vowels, wile dwarven tongues prefer harsher, more uvular and darker
>sounds and shorter syllables that often end in stops.
>
>Maarten

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