Re: my proposals for a philosophical language

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!
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