Re: Comparison of philosophical languages

Andrew Nowicki wrote:
>Andrew Nowicki wrote:
>AN> abrasive = y-dy-fe = "noun sharp powder"
>AN> accountant = o-ga-ja = "noun money craftsman"
>AN> acceleration = y-co-zi-ly = "noun changing mobile number"
>
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>AJ> Quite possibly it doesn't concern you at all,
>AJ> but a language in which (apparently) most nouns
>AJ> are lengthy compounds, without any actual
>AJ> derivational morphemes, strikes me as unnatural.
>
>You sound like a conservative person.
Thanks. That really warms when I was told a while ago that I was an
unltra-liberal because I believe that human activities may be influencing
climate change.

Seriously, I don't see how I'm being "conservative" here - "skeptic", yes,
"pessimistic", yes, but "conservative"?

>aUI and Lojban conlangs also use compound words.
>Each aUI root word is a single letter. Lojban root
>words are 3 or 4 letters long.
And this is relevant how? IIRC, Lojban doesn't even try to be natural? aUI I
know nothing of.

>If you have memorized 180 root words of Ygyde, it is
>easy to memorize "money craftsman." The word "accountant"
>is meaningless to someone who learns the English language.
No, it's quite transparently someone who deals with accounts. And I can
think of quite a few professions and other characters that could be termed
"money craftsmen". What about minters of counterfeit coins? In both cases
we're dealing with words whose constituent parts give a hint, but no more,
to the meaning of the whole.

>AJ> Is the thing supposed to be taxonomical in that
>AJ> you can, given the rules, figure out the meaning
>AJ> of a compound? If not, I'm seriously failing to
>AJ> see the point in this kind of vocabulary structure.
>
>You can do it either way. I made taxonomical words
>of plants, vegetables, and animals. Most of these
>words have 3 syllables. All vegetables have 2 identical
>syllables and 1 unique syllable. Such taxonomical names
>sound alike, so they are sometimes hard to tell apart.
OK. I'm unconvinced that taxonomical words provide more benefits than
drawbacks for common words (for uncommon ones, taxonomic or other
transparency is, IMHO, clearly to be desired), but that's another
discussion.

BTW, for religions, if unanalyzable words are OK, you could make them of the
format "noun-X-religious-organization", where "X" refers to the religion's
self-designation; Christianity could have the Ygyde expression for
"messianic", Islam the one for "submission", Daoism something with "way" or
"path", etc.

                                                        Andreas

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