Re: fewest sounds?

This is pretty clever.  I can't picture it in practice -- well, not in
*spoken* practice -- but it would be good color in, oh, a sci-fi or
fantasy context heavy on intrigue.  (With inhumanly clever intriguers,
of course.)  Even if the information provided is pretty simple -- say,
on the truth values of their utterances, or the allegiances of the
conversants.  "This is false [what I'm saying in the host language
right now].  I say it to mislead [who I look at right now].  She's
with the enemy."

Provided you as the author can specify both languages -- I'd want a
pretty free-order host language with tons of near-synonyms -- you can
embed the embedded all sorts of places.  In certain stops, as you
said, in the vowels... even in the shapes of words.  Say the language
has the possible word-shapes CVC, CVN, NVC, CVNC, CVCVC, NVCVC, CVNVC,
etc. etc; *these* could be the "phonemes" that make up the embedded
words.  Tone patterns, too; a message could be embedded in the
"melody" of the utterance.

Reminds me of Count Fenring in Dune, who constantly converses with
Lady Fenring in a language embedded in his constant "hmm, hhn hmnh"s.

On 11/28/05, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
Or two stops, with allophonic noise of any nature other
> than those stops after each one. That's one I quite like. You could hide a
> text inside another one of another language by careful word choice in the
> "host" language.
>
>
>
>
> Paul
>

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