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Re: my proposals for a philosophical language

From:Muke Tever <mktvr@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 22, 2003, 13:09
From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>
> After a bit of poking around, I found some interesting charts of sounds. > Below are all the sounds common to English, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese > (Cantonese). Between these four languages, we have a substantial portion of > the people in the world. All who speak any of these languages have these > sounds: > > p t k > m n > f s h > w l y > a i u
I started such a venture once. The lang was called Mira and had a similar inventory: Consonants: p t k m n f s w (l/r) Vowels: i u e o a b d and g would be rare (possibly loans-only, and loans might be particular about l/r values). All the consonants would have a range of acceptable values (not differentiating for voicing, say, or tenseness/laxness in the vowels) I think e and o should be rarer too, hmm...
> That's 11 consonants and 3 vowels. Allowing CV syllables, that gives us 36 > possible syllables. But with only these three vowels, we have a great deal > of distinctiveness between them. So let's expand that to: > > a i u > ai au > > That gives us 5 vowels, including diphthongs. Or 60 syllables. If we allow > CVC syllables, that increases the number to 720.
Mira had /oi/ and /eu/, as these were less likely to sound like or become /e/ and /o/ (than /ai/ and /au/ in any case). The syllable structure was CVn, so, 126 syllables (182 with all the consonants, I think)? Mono- and disyllabic roots, according to this, numbered 8,281 possible. Of course since I wasnt entirely serious, Mira had a nightmare orthography. The orthography was a syllabary. All the characters were either long or round (1's and 0's, if you will). p t k d f s w m n l/r a 0- 1- 0- 1- 0- 1- 0- 0- 1- 0- e 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* 1* o 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 u 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* 0* eu 0X 1X 0X 1X 0X 1X 0X 0X 1X 0X oi 0X 1X 0X 1X 0X 1X 0X 0X 1X 0X where "-" indicates a translucent character "*" a shiny one (this being planned for an animation, it would actually sparkle) "X" one whose color was on a gradient (how -eu's gradient differed from -oi's, I forget) as for what color goes for what character: p = magenta t = yellow k = cyan d = orange f = red s = aqua/green w = black m = violet/purple n = brown lr = indigo/dark blue So "pa" would be represented by a round translucent magenta symbol, and "tu" by a round shiny yellow symbol. I told you it was nightmarish :x) I may pull this out sometime, and build vocabulary on a hanziological scheme... but not now, too busy :p *Muke! -- http://www.frath.net/