Re: Is there any derivatives of heinleins "gulf" language speedtalk?

Hallo!

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Thursday, July 7, 2005, at 08:37 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> > Hallo!
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > As Mark Rosenfelder once put it: Ogden and Richards cheated.
>
> They did   :)
>
> > Reality is too complex to pigeonhole it into a closed set of
> > categories like that.  Basic English makes use of a large number
> > of idiomatic expressions (e. g. _make good_ `succeed'), which
> > must be learned individually like the words they replace.
>
> Absolutely. What Ogden & Richards showed in fact is that 850 words are
> *not* sufficient vocabulary to express anything that could be expressed by
> normal vocabularies, unless your language is endowed with a _very large_
> number of idiomatic expressions.
Exactly.  There's no way around it.  Reality has an indefinite
number of things in stock; each of these things requires an
expression that must be assigned arbitrarily, be it a word or
an idiomatic expression.  You always need an open class of
expressions - either words, or idiomatic compounds.

>   Reginald Dutton claimed to do even better:
> "...the whole of the Speedwords vocabulary is constructed from no more
> than 491 key-words or radicals selected on the basis of maximum
> internationality, which, with the help of 20 single-letter creative
> suffixes and/or succinct compounding of two separate Speedwords, provides
> for the expression of every concept of the human mind." [Dutton Speedwords
> Dictionary, 1951]
>
> - For 'creative suffix' read "suffixes whose vagueness of definition
> allows them to be used unpredictably and idiomatically" (which I guess is
> creative   :)
> - For succinct compounding read "idiomatic compounding."
Well put.

> It seems to me that the more you artificially restrict the lexemes in your
> vocabulary, the more you have to have recourse to idiomatic compounds and/
> or expressions, which in effect have to be learnt as separate words.
Absolutely.  From as far back as the 17th century, people have tried
to work around this, and all of them failed.  But there are still
mavericks around who won't get it, and try to work out schemes
with closed vocabularies.

> [snip]
> > A language with 850 phonemes would quickly run into trouble because
> > of mispronunciations and mishearings.  And that doesn't even take
> > into account the question of phonotactics.
>
> Absolutely. A language of 850 _phonemes_ must mean a language of an even
> greater number of phones. It would simply not work for us poor humans for
> the reasons Jörg gives. It might be OK for a race of aliens who have
> developed far more sophisticated sense perceptors than we have and who
> communicate via a channel far less susceptible to 'noise' than we are used
> to.
> ==============================================
>
> On Thursday, July 7, 2005, at 10:57 , Joseph Bridwell wrote:
>
> >> Trying to work out Heinlein's speedtalk may be an entertaining
> >> mindgame, but I don't think this pursuit is practical.
> >
> > When has this group ever demanded practicality? IMO, such a demand
> > would jettison half the conlangs ever mentioned here.
>
> Half? I would guess that most folk one meets day by day would probably say
> 'all'. How many of the conlangs discussed here are actually practical
> pursuits?
Most aren't.  Yet, practicality is not only an issue with languages
intended for actual use, but to some degree also with languages meant
to represent languages used by fictional people.  After all, it should
be believable that those fictional people converse in the fictional
language.

>       Is not part of the attraction of conlanging experimantation and
> testing the unknown?
>
> > Personally,
> > speedtalk sounds like a good personal exercise, and therein may lie
> > its worth.
>
> Absolutely.
Yes.

Greetings,

Jörg.