Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>         You're speaking of spelling here, not of language. That's not the
> same thing at all. Spellings are decided inventions of people, so we can put
> them on a scale of efficiency.
Even that can't really be placed on a scale of efficiency.  For
instance, Japanese uses a lot of logograms.  On the one hand, it saves
space, and is, in that way, more efficient than hiragana or
romanization, and also there are a lot of homophones in Japanese which
can be distinguished by which kanji (logogram) is used.  On the other
hand.  Syllabries, like hiragana, are easier for children to learn than
alphabets, but are less flexible and require more symbols.  Alphabets
are the most flexible of them all, and require the least symbols, and
is, in that way, more efficient, and yet it's more difficult than
syllabries for children to learn, but still easier than logograms.
Also, the English morphophonemic alphabet is more efficient in that
roots are more recognizable between words; compare the pronunciations of
democracy/democratic, and the _pter_ in helicopter and pterodactyl, and
compare the past tenses of overcome and succumb, both of which end in
/k@m/, but because overcome contains the spelling -come, you know its
past tense comes from the past tense of come, while succumb doesn't end
in -come, thus its past tense does not come from come.  But it is less
efficient in that it's harder to learn than a purely phonemic alphabet.
So, overall what's the most efficient method?  Depends on the language,
and on your values.

>         To call a sort of fruit 'poison-apple', you must have a reason.
> Here, we speak of vocabulary, more exactly (for 'poison-apple') conscious
> invention of vocabulary. Obviously 'poison-apple' isn't good to name
> tomatoes, but it can't be anything else than a consious invention, so it's
> not language.
I beg to differ.  At one time, it was thought that tomatoes were toxic,
therefore "poison-apple" would have been a reasonable name.  If it had
been given that name, we might still be using that name, even tho we
knew better.  Perhaps it would be worn down to something like
"poisom'ple" or "poi'napple" or "po'napple" (/p@n&pl/)

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