Re: The beautifulest phonology

In a message dated 3/24/02 05.10.06 PM, ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:

>To return to my cooking analogy, if I simply mixed together all the
>'beautifullest foods' or, if you prefer, the 'most aesthetically pleasing
>to the taste buds' foods, I think the result would not be pleasant.  We
>would need a little sourness to counteract the overall sugary effect; we
>would need other flavors to spice the thing up.
>
>a few harsh sounds might add spice to the language  :)
    YeP. Can you imagine how bland (and ultimately useless) English would be
if all of it's variety (& variations of English) were somehow bulldozered
into a perfectly pleasing language?
    Some have tried to make their own versions of English: English with
all-to-most Romance roots replaced by Anglo-Saxon ones (or vice-versa);
various phonological and/or Spelling Reform proposals to make English more
easy to learn, reduction of vocabulary as in BASIC English and "Nuclear
English".... etc.

    My stepmother tongue English is pretty damn cool for an young,
imperialistic "rich bitch" of a language * ;)  - even a bit sexier than what
I used to believe.

    * well, Late Modern English is only about 300 years old compared to
Modern Chinese at 800 years old . (Sorta like comparing a somewhat tawdry,
"trendoid" 30-something ex-thief-prostitute who has been "around the block
and the world a few times" to a venerable-but-still-lively dragonlady who
stays home mostly in her old, comfortable palatial clutter).

    Even taking into account English itself is traceable back about 1,000
years, she's still an upstart youngster in comparsion.
     The Chinese language itself, as we understand it, has its traceable
roots 4,000+ years ago - as seen in the beautiful historical artifacts called
the "Oracle Bones" (or Shang oracle texts).
    The Archaic Chinese of this period is of some particularly important
interest to me - not just cuz I am Han Chinese. I find it fascinating that
all words/characters are"semantically multi-valued nuclei" - exceptions being
pronouns &, to a limited degree, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and
particles are also monosemantic.
    Another feature is its two all-purpose prepositions:
    _ yu_ marking the recipient or addressee of an action or motion "to(ward)"
    _zi_ is _yu_'s antonym  - action or motion "from"

    anyways... enuff said (never 'nuff done...)

Hanuman Zhang {HANoomaan JAHng} /'hanuma~n  dZa'hN/
            __ __   _   __  _  __   __  __  _   __ _    ___  ___ _

CENTO: twinkle twinkle lil stars

Un COUP De DéS ... JAMAIS ... N'ABOLIRA ... Le HASARD
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    I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
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    O! Notte stellata... matematica...
les astres sont le silencieux orchestre des mondes in connus
OM ... m'illumino d' immenso... OM