Re: Over the rivver and Throo the wuds

Mia Soderquist wrote:

> On a completely unrelated note (Don't you just hate it when I change
> subjects in the middle of a post), I spent half of today thinking about
> a sign I saw in the window of a bicycle shop. In gigantic orange
> letters, it said "90 DAYS SAMEASCASH".
I once read an article talking about "straphangers", which I read
as /str@ 'fejn dZ@rz/.  I didn't know what they were, but I deduced
from context that it meant "subway riders".  Only later did I find
out that the word was "strap-hangers", those who hang from the straps
provided in (old) New York City subway cars to hang on to when the
train goes around a curve.

> (b) It had me considering how a language could be built so that it could
> be written without spaces, with obvious markers for where words begin
> and end.
Loglan/Lojban can be written without spaces if you are willing to
mark stresses instead, since there is a complete algorithm for
dissecting strings of phonemes + stress into words; it does not depend
on knowing what words actually exist.  In practice, only combinations
of grammatical particles are usually written without separating
spaces, since they are all CV or CVV, so "le nu" and "lenu" are
obviously the same.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)