Re: Tong-cho-la, a philosophical language

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:

<<<
That happens in every language, not just philosophical ones. Any terms are
necessarily vague and arbitrary.If you're targeting mathematicians and
rocket scientists, you may be more precise, but things will necessarily be
arbitrary.
[snip]
You have to start somewhere, and I submit that arbitrarily-assigned words
with some mnemonic meaning (as Joe has done above) is infinitely more
useful and feasible than any attempt to be geometrically or conceptually
precise. You can't go around mumbling 50000-syllable nouns that precisely
describe their referents in all possible conceptual variations.
<<<
There is obviously a kind of sort of misunderstanding here. I was not
advocating a more "scientific" way to make compound words---quite to the
contrary! :-). I do know that "motion+thing" means "animal" in some
language.... I precisely argued that making the word "car" from half a dozen
of consonants each of which referring to a vague concept is not a more
efficient mnemonic method than, say, making the same word from three random
letters like "c-a-r". Personally I would start from "vehicle" rather than
from "box", but as you say, that's a completely arbitrary choice.

<<<
The point is not so much in creating words that completely describe
themselves, but in creating words from mnemonics that would make it easy
to recall *once you've learned it*. If mnemonics are chosen carefully, it
might even provide clues for someone who doesn't know the word to make a
semi-informed guess of what it means.
>>>
In which case natural languages such as khmer make a far better job by
combining two or three simple words at most. More is entirely unnecessary
IMHO. It's no worse to learn a basic vocabulary of, say, 2000 decently
precise and concrete words and their binary combinations or derivations than
200 vague "concepts" and their triple, quadruple combination or more. I fail
to understand what is mnemonic in scrambling several concepts like "atom" in
the definition of a word like "material". Especially when you want to use
this word to make other common compounds like SJ does. I would end up
learning "sycrykpy" as "material" and not as "atom+stuff1+stuff2". The other
flaw is that in most philosophical langs "flobodop" means "table" and
"flobodok" means "seat" so you're absolutely lost. That's what makes them so
quaint and endearing :-)

<<<
Not necessarily. A lot of Chinese words are built from more-or-less
arbitrary compounds. E.g., the previous layman's term for 'computer' was
'electronic brain', and now it's 'computing machine' (which is the same
word for 'calculator', incidentally). You still have to memorize what it
means, but the mnemonic composition of the word helps in remembering it.
Much better than /kong1bu3de2/, a phonetic rendering of 'computer', which
would be just as arbitrary, but harder to remember 'cos it has no mnemonic
to it other than the similarity of sound to an English word.
>>>
I do appreciate certain SJ compounds as being easier to remember, but a lot
of other ones are not, and a great number sound very much the same because
they share common kanjis that sound all the same (how many ji, shi, jou,
kou, sai, etc?) and philosophical languages share that flaw. The compounds
that are easier to remember are usually made like derived nouns are, that
is: classifier+description/function, exactly like your example "computer" is
made: brain+machine. Other ones are: sleep+facility, eat+instrument,
electric+cart, female+cow, beauty+sense, etc. The mnemonic ones I like are
also completely allegoric: ox+ear for "guiding", shield+halbard for
"contradiction", etc. But "box+wheel+steer+etc" sounds more conlanging fun
than mnemonicly efficient IMHO. In other words, I prefer "lung-flame" to
"body-bag-air-circulate-fire-subpart-health-impair" or whatever :-)))) And
contrary to what you wrote, I don't advocate any kind of "scientific" method
to make words. Actually, I don't advocate any method at all.

<<<
So I think a slightly mnemonic method of word construction is far better
than a completely arbitrary one.
>>>
We obviously disagree as to what is mnemonically efficient. Which is fine,
isn't it? :-)

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