Re: telepaths, sound changes, age changes, v changes, and lexicon

On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Muke Tever wrote:

> > From:    Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
> > Subject: Re: lexicon
> >
> > On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Tim Judge, Erion Telepalda wrote:
> >
> > > Hey does anyone know where I can find out the minimum of words I need
> for a
> > > "complete" language. English Dictionarys are useless for this (and much
> to
> > > big), and I don't know any other language well enough for me to determin
> > > exactly how usefull the words are.
> >
> > You can find a claim to a composite 2000-word "minimum" at the Landau
> > Universal Vocabulary:
> >
> > http://pages.prodigy.com/kankonia/luv.htm
>
> Hmm, do words 'marijuana' (1859), 'zebra' (1915), 'to call via phone' (921),
> and the like really have a claim to being universal?
I did say "claim."  :-p  I haven't really looked at it much; I keep the
link around as a "nice idea" and "source of inspiration" if I ever need
it, though in practice I can generally come up with the concepts I want
on my own.  I'm guessing that if you ignore some of the more ersatz
entries it might serve as a starting-point for someone looking for that
sort of thing.

YHL