Heinlen's SpeedTalk and existing similar languages.

Speedtalk is an idea for a new language put forth by Robert A. Heinlein in his novella, Gulf (1949). Speedtalk was defined as an entirely logic-based language, and it was a key plot device. The basic concept was that the conlang would utilize a complex syntax with a minimal vocabulary and a phonemically extensive alphabet (including such letters as œ, ħ, ø, and ʉ), and it was therefore considered extremely efficient. A single phoneme indicated a word, so a "word" indicated a sentence. In the only example given, a single word meant "The far horizons draw no nearer."

The story invokes the notions of the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski and the work of Samuel Renshaw to explain the nature of thought and how people could be trained to think more rapidly and accurately.

The supermen communicate in an arcane language, a form of English called Speedtalk, which is both unintelligible and unlearnable by outsiders. Speedtalk is founded upon two principles: a reduced lexicon, and an enlarged phonology.
Any English sentence can be composed from a small vocabulary, such as the word set of Basic English. Also, although the human vocal tract can produce hundreds of different sounds, no existing human language normally makes use of more than a few dozen of them. In Speedtalk, each word from the Basic English set is assigned to a different sound. A sentence in Basic English can therefore be pronounced in perhaps one fourth the normal time.

------

D: Oh. Been done. A designed language that explores this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil_language

Ithkuil’s phonological system of 65 consonants and 17 vowels is based on sounds from a variety of languages, including such as Chechen or Abkhaz. It is often difficult for a monolingual speaker to pronounce, or even to distinguish, some of the sounds. The consonants of Ithkuil are as follows:

No person is hitherto known to be able to speak Ithkuil fluently; Quijada, for one, does not.[1]

D: Hmm. A language so difficult that it cannot be learned as an adult.
Meaning only those raised on it from birth could possibly use it.
That narrows down its utility...

I suppose, ultimately, that the brain's inherent limit, its Universal Grammar, provides a hard cap on how complex a language can be.

----
The most documented living language with the most tones currently is Ai-Cham (錦話), a member of Kam-Sui languages in the Tai-Kadai language family. It has a total number of 11 tones[citation needed]; Pinghua has 10 tones[citation needed].
However, preliminary linguistic work being done in the Chatino family of languages in southern Mexico suggests that some Chatino dialects may phonologically distinguish as many as 14 tones.

Language with the most words: English, approx. 250,000 distinct words

Language with the largest alphabet: Khmer (74 letters). This Austro-Asiatic language is the official language of Cambodia, where approx.12 million people speak it. Minority speakers live in a handful of other countries.

The language with the most sounds (phonemes): !Xóõ (112 phonemes). Approx. 4200 speak !Xóõ, the vast majority of whom live in the African country of Botswana.

Language with the most consonant sounds: Ubyx (81 consonants). This language of the North Causasian Language family, once spoken in the Haci Osman village near Istanbul, has been extinct since 1992. Among living languages, !Xóõ has the most consonants (77).

Language with the most vowel sounds: !Xóõ (31 vowels)

-----
D: OK, let's look at a fairly basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) form syllable:
1) about 30 vowels
2) about 80 consonants
3) about 10 tones
4) 3 way vowel gemination? Like Thok Reel.
D: so... 80 x 30 x 80. x10 x 3?
That's ignoring diphthongs.
About... 500 0 0 0 0. Five million possible 1 syllable words? Gack.

So if this can be done, why is it not?
Diminishing returns. Design tradeoffs.

Take the simplest of natural languages, Rotokas.

Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phoneme inventories and its alphabet is perhaps the smallest in use. (The Pirahã language has been claimed to have fewer speech sounds, but it is not written.) The alphabet consists of twelve letters, representing eleven phonemes. The alphabet characters are A E G I K O P R S T U V

D: one natural language - a pidgin - Taki Taki- has a vocabulary of 340 words.

Sranan (also Sranan Tongo "Surinamean tongue", Surinaams, Surinamese, Suriname Creole, Taki Taki) is a creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 400,000 people in Suriname.[1] It is the mother tongue of the Creoles. Sranan was previously called nengre or negerengels (Dutch, "negroenglish").

D: the benefit of fewer sounds that are used as significant is that they are more clear.
The difference between normal, nasalized and velarized is pretty subtle.
Toss in less than ideal conditions, such as background noise, and I bet Rotokas is still crystal clear.
That would not be true of Xoo.
Or SpeedTalk.

----------
I also have another objection to SpeedTalk as a concept.
It is so busy trying to break the record for per-syllable info density that it ignores per-time.
By this I mean that complex tones (rising/falling) and vowel gemination (1, 2, 3 time duration) extend the time duration of
a syllable.
The result is that a simpler system, with fewer possible meanings per syllable may very well have a HIGHER info density per second.
And then there is the chance of pronunciation and hearing/processing mistakes.

I'm sure Spanish vowels are more distinct than English ones, for example.

bit, bet, bat, but beat, bait, boot, boat, bought, bite, and bout.

Versus AEIOU. Ah, eh, ee, oh, oo.

------
Aside. Yup, don't think I'll be making a carbon copy of Lojban. Being so unambiguous and logical is, well, downright unnatural.

http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/auxlang-design.html

D: good primer. Too bad langmaker folded.

Logical languages are also unsuitable

The disciples of logical languages (loglangs, such as Loglan or Lojban) often propose using such a language as an international auxiliary language. However, loglangs are poorly equipped for this purpose. The loglangers tend to overlook the simple fact that language and formal logic do not serve the same purposes. Language is not primarily about making propositions that can be mathematically proven or disproven; its purpose lies in communicating ideas and emotions. There are many facets of language use which logical languages do not cover well. Language is language and logic is logic; they are different things.

It is also such that logical languages are very difficult to learn and use. Most people are not acquainted with the intricacies of formal logic; they cannot be expected to learn it in order to learn a language. I once tried to learn Lojban; I quickly abadoned that attempt because I simply could not understand how the language works. The language does not even have the same kind of parts of speech as human languages have. Instead of nouns and verbs, phrases and clauses, Lojban has things bearing such fanciful names as brivla, cmene or selbri. Those are Lojban words which cannot easily be translated into any other language; it tells a lot that Lojbanists use these words rather than English equivalents when talking about Lojban in English. I haven't met the same difficulties in any grammar of a natural language, no matter how exotic. Logical languages may be absolutely neutral - but only because they work in a way completely different from how human languages work, and are thus exceedingly difficult to master.

D: I found vast lists of alphabetical Lojban vocabulary.
Of no use whatsoever in learning it.
Is there a useful software primer?

D: the Decimese logic/ethics vocabulary will be terse and concise.
But I won't be slapping logic in its core. It would cease to be a viable IAL.

Lojban, having been designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, was NOT designed as an IAL.
Its fans seem to think they can tack on 'oh yeah- and it could a great IAL!' as an afterthought.
Language design doesn't work that way.
If the principle is not central during design, it certainly won't appear in the final product.

Notably, I strongly part ways with all cultural neutrality premises. There have been 2 major approaches.
1) Euroclones. Esp-o, et al. Europe rocks- suck it up.
2) Neutral. Nobody opposes it... and nobody supports it.
And I suppose, the usual North American refrain that everybody should/does use English.

So I suppose, in order, Decimese is designed to:
1) be easy
2) be powerful
3) suck up to the English (now) and Chinese (later).

A language that is made to be learned by adults better be much more Rotokas than Xoo.
As many overt and redundant indicators of word boundaries and grammatical component should be present as possible.
I default to subject-verb-object for the reason of 3).
Plus there are two ways to bypass word order:
1) Europe rocks- suck it up. Latinate. Heavily infixed. Hard in itself to most of world.
2) same trick, but using isolated word particles. Like Lojban.

As I've said before, there IS a reason to use a different word order: SOV.
Most 'natural', based on intuitive hand gesturing.
Also, most clearly parsed by a computer.

On a related note, I think I can have an optional 'long vowel' system for external word particles.
Not of any immediate use though. Not in Mandarin? Then don't bother.

----
http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/05/chinas-economy-could-pass-usa-in-2020.html

D: do I feel a bit like a prostitute, sucking up to English and Mandarin?
Yep. But if nothing before has worked, then it's time for a new sales pitch.
IALs remain a "solution without a problem" in the eyes of most of the world.
So I need to implement a game-changing strategy if I expect to not get lost in obscurity like every other effort.

a brief summary of Toki Pona vocabulary

D: I finally located the list online. It spans multiple pages. I made a shorter list.
When I complete memory aids for myself, I'll post them too.
Arbitrary syllables are difficult to memorize.

----


ale, ali everything, all
anpa bottom, low
ante difference, different, otherwise, change
anu or
awen stay, keep, remaining

e sep (introduces a direct object)
en and

ijo thing, of something, objectify
ike bad, alas, negative, negativity, make bad, be bad
ilo tool
insa inside, inner

jaki dirty, dirt, pollute, yucky
jan human, person, personify
jelo light green?
jo have, having, receive

kala fish
kalama sound, make sound, to sound
kama come, coming, bring about, event
kasi plant
ken can, possibility, make ", " that
kepeken use ,with
kili fruit
kin also
kiwen hard, a hard thing
ko semi-solid
kon air or soul, gaseous
kule colour, colourful, to paint
kute listen, auditory
kulupu group, communal
kalama sep (between adverb or phrase)

lapa sleep, sleeping
lawa head, main, lead
len clothing
lete cold, uncooked, chill
li sep between subject/verb
lili little, reduce
linja long, chain
liju flat/bendable, paper
loje red
lon be, be present
luka hand/arm
lukin see, look, visually
lupa hole, door

ma outdoors, country
mama parent, parental
mani money
meli female, wife
mi I/we, my/our
mije man, husband, manly
moku food
moli death, die, kill
monsi back, rear
mu cute animal noise
mun moon, lunar
musi fun, artful, play, amuse
mute many, amount, make much

nanpa numbers, -th ordinal
nasa silly, drive crazy
nasin way, road
nena nose, hill
ne this
nimi word, name
noka leg, foot

o hey!
oco eye
olin love, love, to love
ona she/they, her/their
open open, turn on

pakala blunder, screw up, break (swear)
pali activity, action, make, function
palisa long hard object
pana give, giving
pi sep of, belonging to
pilin feelings, feel, sense
pimeja black, darkness, darken
pini end, completed, finish
pipi bug
poka side, with, neighboring
poki container, box
pona good, simple, thanks, fix
sama same, like
seli fire, hot, heat
selo outside, skin, bark
seme WH- question
sewi high, superior
sijelo body, state
sike circle, round
sin new, renew
sina you, your
sinpin front, chest/face, wall
sitelen picture, draw
sona knowledge, know, understand, study
soweli animal - land, cute
suli big, enlarge, size
suno sun, light
supa horizontal, floor, (furniture)
suwi candy, sweet, sweeten

tan from, cause
taso only, but
tawa prep to, in order to, towards, for,
until, go, movement, moving,move
telo water, liquid, wash
tenpo time, duration
toki language, talking, say, talk
tomo man-made space e.g. house
tu two, duo, double
unpa sex, erotic, screw, have sex
uta mouth, oral
utala conflict, attack

walo white, whiteness
wan one, unit, unite
waso bird
wile want, should, must, desire, necessary

-----
D: A series of memory aids would be most welcome. In some cases, a cf. would suffice- the origins are sometimes plain.
In other cases, other methods can be employed.
Since I plan to learn the basic words, I'll post my learning aids when I get that far.

For example, in Morse Code CHAR-lie CHAR-lie is used to recall C: -.-.
Very helpful.

D: thoughts on T.P.
- it reminds me a bit of Volapuk, which means "world speak".
It shows a keen understanding of pidgin.
Some of the broad definitions closely resemble ASL. ASL is also a language of face-to-face communication primarily, with a heavy emphasis on context to clarify meaning.
Some of the categories seem broad.
E.g. tawa prep to, in order to, towards, for,
until, go, movement, moving,move
But this shows she (Sonja) has studied other world languages.
--------
Prepositions English prepositions can cause great difficulty for Somalis. Whereas English has a great variety of prepositions,

Somali has only four, and they come before the verb rather than before the noun. Because they are so few, Somali prepositions have a wide range of meanings:

ka 'from, away from, out of' and 'about, concerning'
ku 'in, into, on, at' and 'with, by means of, using'
la 'with, together with, in the company of'
u 'to, towards' and 'for, on behalf of'
------
Again, I never quite caught on to her choice of the "W" phoneme.
I do heartily approve of her choice to bypass the F/V pair.
I imagine I could port Visemese over with just a few changes to phoneme choices.
Like Ygyde, the ability to swap between alternative spoken choices could possibly work.
------
D: I imagine the end result is a combo of German and Esp-o experience.
1) German word for tank. Panzerkampfwagen, ‘tank’ or literally ‘armoured combat vehicle’.
2) Esp-o started with just 1000 word root/stems. Now it's more like 10,000, I think.
I imagine for any precision, T.P. requires a German-tankesque series of compounded words.
Don't get me wrong- a Tao inspired language is not the same as a global aux-lang design.
So really this is an observation and not a criticism.
I've read Tzu about a dozen times now. I'll read it another dozen times. Hard for my Western mind.
Especially one like mine that admires technology and cleverness so much.

D: the rules for syllable building would actually allow quite a few more basic words of one syllable.
Allowing for intermediate words of 2 or even 3 syllables, there are actually quite a few options.

Kipf's law was obeyed fairly well. Common words are typically one syllable, though with exceptions.

------
The lack of numbers in the first version may seem glaring, but consider the following excerpt.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,414291,00.html

The language is incredibly spare. The Pirahã use only three pronouns. They hardly use any words associated with time and past tense verb conjugations don't exist. Apparently colors aren't very important to the Pirahãs, either -- they don't describe any of them in their language. But of all the curiosities, the one that bugs linguists the most is that Pirahã is likely the only language in the world that doesn't use subordinate clauses. Instead of saying, "When I have finished eating, I would like to speak with you," the Pirahãs say, "I finish eating, I speak with you."
Equally perplexing: In their everyday lives, the Pirahãs appear to have no need for numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like "all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahãs. There is one word, "hói," which does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for example.
-----
D: so really, Sonja just matched the simplicity of an existing natural language. Pretty hard to believe!
I figure the obsession with recursion and the infinite possible number of sentences is overblown.
Folks with pidgin get by. What is not said- between the lines- context and shared experience- presumably counts for more.

D: in conclusion, T.P.'s decision to use a very small number of possible phonemes and syllables, complete with a very natural-feeling definition system, results in some pretty broad brush strokes for meaning.
It parts ways with Decimese on the latter count. I instead use a very unnatural and precise definition system to allow surprisingly dense precision if needed.
Of course, both thought experiments have totally different objectives.
She wished to capture the essence of Tao- the good and simple life.
I wish to capture what Sapir called the spirit of our age.

"The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science."

I imagine Decimese will end up feeling much like Lojban, with a particular emphasis of the MELTS core doctrine, and ease for Mandarin speakers.
MELTS - (in order of emphasis) - math, space/time, logic/ethics.

I'll post my insights from the past few weeks when I have time.
I pretty much embedded the taxonomic system in the # themes along both the vowel and consonant axes.
Consonants handle the math. Vowels handle space/time- geometry. Vowels 1-5 match dimensions 0,1,2,3, 4(time) and ?5.
All the pronouns and spatial prepositions are derived from the geometry. All the abstract concepts like logical relationship are denoted via the logic module. Ethics gets derived from logic.
I was trying to encapsulate both Genesis and the Big Bang in the most basic vocabulary. It's going well.

Pona!

minimal grammars revisited. visemese. mapping ASL onto a letter code

http://www.rickharrison.com/language/optimal.html

"The Master". He got fed up with the endless bickering on aux-lang sites.

Sapir et al. recommended an even smaller array of phonemes: /a, i, u, p, t, k, s, l, m, n, v/.
The most unmarked phonemes would be these: /a, i, u, p, t, k, m, n, s, l/.
Morneau surveyed data on 25 major languages and indicated that the following phonemes are used in at least 22 of the 25: /a, e, i, o, u, b, d, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, y/

D: I'd say Toki Pona's designer read that too.

Toki Pona has nine consonants (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/).

D: OK, T.P.'s "w" seems anomalous.
---
VISEMESE. My first language attempt.

Visemese: 1 – ad, 2 – ba, 3 – da, 4 – cha, 5 – la , 6 – ra , 7 – tha , 8 – va, 9 – wa, 10 – a-ad.

D: so b d ch l r th v w.

D: keep in mind these are based on easily lip-readable phonemes.

// English examples
//------------------
SP_VISEME_0 = 0, // silence
SP_VISEME_1, // ae, ax, ah
SP_VISEME_2, // aa
SP_VISEME_3, // ao
SP_VISEME_4, // ey, eh, uh
SP_VISEME_5, // er
SP_VISEME_6, // y, iy, ih, ix
SP_VISEME_7, // w, uw
SP_VISEME_8, // ow
SP_VISEME_9, // aw
SP_VISEME_10, // oy
SP_VISEME_11, // ay
SP_VISEME_12, // h
SP_VISEME_13, // r
SP_VISEME_14, // l
SP_VISEME_15, // s, z
SP_VISEME_16, // sh, ch, jh, zh
SP_VISEME_17, // th, dh
SP_VISEME_18, // f, v
SP_VISEME_19, // d, t, n
SP_VISEME_20, // k, g, ng
SP_VISEME_21, // p, b, m
---
Choosing between dkp and n ng m was tough.
I am also unsure how hard consonant clusters would be.
In theory, it *could* result in a fairly robust phonotactic system.
The above tough choice made it incompatible with any standard IAL attempt.
Losing the nasal consonants is a great blow to an aux-lang.
The FV pair is not good for a truly minimal phoneme selection, nor is the R/L distinction.
It is also completely incompatible with Decimese.

I think the best vocabulary would be generated from common word definitions.
I.e. house, hospital, fire/police stations, the company office - BUILDING.
Kinship. Social prestige. Biology and body parts. Economics. Political, legal, social...
Heavily compounding from there would allow a robust and fairly brief core set of words.
Pronouns could resemble Ceqli.
Things like move, letter, lip, and type-tell could denote means to communicate. And so on.

----
I only became aware from a book on Chomsky that French Canada has its own sign language. Nuts.
More official language bilingual hassle.

Quebec Sign Language, known in French as Langue des signes québécoise (LSQ), is a sign language used in Canada. Most LSQ users are located in Quebec, but a few are scattered in major cities in the rest of the country.
LSQ is closely related to both American Sign Language and French Sign Language. Due to segregation by gender in deaf education, males and females use slightly different forms of LSQ

D: !!! Even male and female versions? You gotta be kidding.
At least Quebec French sounds like bastardized language to the Parisians.
Never figured out why I learned France-style French in school.

D: Visemese - or Deafese - has the potential to address these language barriers in the deaf community. Perhaps they will recognize a 'good thing' like a universal language prior to the speaking community. For that matter, a well-developed deaf lip-readable language would also make a fine speaking one.

114 sign languages derived from the Ethnologue database (www.ethnologue.com/, 11/8/01, "Browse the Web Version" link); 157 more sign languages, systems and dialects, and references, added by Thomas R. Harrington, Gallaudet University Library. Total, 271 identified sign languages, dialects, and other sign systems.

D: wow. Just wow.

D: I just spent the week drilling the basic 250 ASL signs into my head. I figure if I know 80-90% of signs well I can then focus on the 10-20% less common ones. It was gruelling to learn 250 signs well in a week. My clan has poor recall.
I'm gonna slow down and aim for 100 signs/week.
In 8 months that should mean about 3000 signs.
Maybe enough for a future police officer (?) to get by.

----
Aside: I was reading on phonology and notation. About broad and narrow transcription systems. I mean the Roman Alphabet and the IPA one - International Phonetic Alphabet.
I pondered whether a fairly brief cypher of letters and numbers could express sign language instructions.
My head is swimming right now, but I'd like to eventually do so.
We would essentially have letters forming syllables, but the syllables could not be pronounced.
I suppose it could be mapped onto the Visemese letter set.
I tried to make a few characters but promptly became bogged down.
Even seemingly simple common signs contain a whole lot of nuance.
Still, it amuses me to attempt it.
I broke down the ASL parts into roughly the following aspects:
1) initial hand sign (sometimes arm, even head).
This can be a signed letter or number, resemble one but not be one, or be a generally natural pantomime hand position.
2) where the sign is held initially
3) the motion - circles (clockwise?), left/right or in/out et al.
4) speed of motion - slow and smooth, steady, sudden and fast? Repeated? How many times?
5) possible body/face emotional cue.
6) resulting position and such after motion.
This does not even address the fact that some common signs (mountain) can contain up to 3 signs. Home is 2 shortened ones.
I'm not sure if there is any need or use for this project. But since I have alotta time on my hands as a security guard right now, why not?

Thoughts?

sign language - ASL. Thoughts.

A few years back, I tried dating on CampusKiss.
Waiting for my date, I spotted a hot blonde woman across the street.
I thought to myself, "I sure hope SHE is my date!" ... she was.
We had coffee dates for a couple of years, though we never became an item.
I learned enough sign language to get by - barely.

Fast forward a few years. In Ontario, sign language is considered an official gov't language.
A deaf person can insist in service in ASL the same as a French person can insist.
I am still pondering becoming a police officer, so now it is a job skill.

But how to learn?
I am chopping up an ASL dictionary. I will clip the 300 most common English words onto cue cards.
From there, I pick various subject themes. Politics. Religion. Insults. Talking dirty. Why? More memorable!
I tested, and can learn 100 signs per week easily enough. In theory, I could be fluent in six months.
Actually, I find signs easier to learn than other spoken languages. No awkward phonemes.
Also, ASL often resembles the complexity level of a pidgin or creole. Little grammar.
Of course, the devil is in the details.

There is deaf etiquette to consider.
Note: deaf is not an insult. It's how they self-identify. Not "hard of hearing". That is just politically correct B.S..
You need to get their attention, but not be patronizing about it.
You need to keep your face visible. Lip-saying the words helps. Facial expressions are important.

The language is not just a simple form of English.
One topicalizes the main aspect of the sentence, then talks about it.
Assigning pronouns and various people their own 'imaginary space' is a powerful tool.
It resembles the ability of Lojban to show various persons by indicating chronological order.
The 'directional verbs' are darn handy. The sign for 'help' can mean I help you or you help me.
It just changes the direction of the hand motion.

A coupla more thoughts.
The word for home is a compound of the words for eat and sleep. Home is where you eat and sleep.
A few words have more nuance than their English counterparts. The preposition "for" can be an abstract internal concept, or else an external 'function-of-something' concept.
There are generally fewer ways to say a concept. A single sign can often have a half dozen meanings, depending on context.
Alternatively, there ARE quite a few ways to say very basic pantomime ideas. For example, "high".

There are bundles of related concepts that share a basic sign element. There are concepts using the letter "Y" that involve mental processes. Alternatively, one simply points at one's brain for other mental concepts.
There are various sign languages in the world. The word "OK" leads to some comical misunderstandings in Europe.
Also, the heavy use of signed-alphabet-letter symbols makes it culturally specific. For example, a cupped hand for "C".
In parts of the world that don't default to our Roman Alphabet, this will be as clear as mud.
For example, the signed word for "picture" is the C-shape slapped onto the palm of the other hand. Camera pic.

Deaf subculture relies heavily on lipreading. I realized how deficient I was while dating "C". She'd lip the words and figure that would help me understand. Of course I could not lipread, nor could I multitask enough to pay attention to two things.

I used to watch West Wing. Well, I think that show creates unreal expectations about the ability of deaf signing to interact in real time with English speaking. I'm sure there are a few experts out there that could refute this.
But I am not sure one can sign as fast as rapid clipped English speech conveys meaning.
Also, since only about 40% of sounds can be lip-read, the idea of a full-speed 100% accurate lip-reading - and from bad angles and in bad lighting- seems highly improbable.

Visemese was my solution to this. It ONLY has lip-readable sounds. And only one of each position. So it is perfectly clear for lip-reading. I happened to pick math as the topic for the first 1/5 installment of the language. But a basic utilitarian vocabulary could make an interesting universal-deaf aux-lang. Everything nation or region-specific sign language is not.
I imagine I'll go back and try that at some point in the future. I'm practicing my lip-reading off cue cards.

----
Aside - is there a complete list of Toki Pona vocabulary somewhere? I just need a simple complete LIST. Major oversight.

"urban dead" game and zombie speech

http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Zombie_Speech_Translators#How_Urban_Dead_processes_Zombie_speech

How Urban Dead processes Zombie speech

(this information was kindly provided by Kevan)
in order of execution:
all occurrences of characters "eiou" (case-insensitive) are replaced with "r".
all characters other than "zhrgbmna .!?-" (case-insensitive) are stripped.
multiple spaces are replaced with a single.
lower-case "r" at the end of words replaced with "rh".
an "a" or "A" by itself will be replaced with "hra".
the starts of sentences are capitalised (the "start of a sentence" is any occurrence of ".!?", followed by a space, followed by a letter.)
spaces preceding any of ".!?" are stripped.
the first character is capitalised.

----
D: Swapping R for vowels implies their vocal chords are constricted and are never fully open. So air flow is always constricted. This also implies everything is voiced.
Imprecise muscle control makes an intentional R aspirated.
This aspiration precedes A.
Capitalizing the first letter suggests imprecise muscle control, with the initial sound more forceful than intended.
Many characters are simply stripped. This looks like a severe form of elision for weaker consonants. Kinda.

For more information, here is the best article online on coarticulation. I'll be revisiting it with new insights for Decimese.

http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/phon2/asscoareli-into.htm

D: you are a brain-hungry zombie in search of warm living meat. But how to commicate with the other ones like you?
There is something wrong with your tongue, and your brain feels muddled too.
The answer - zombese! <:

Phonology

[edit]Phonemes
Much like English, Zamgrh consists of a phonetic alphabet in which a letter or combination of letters may take several tones. Previously it was theorized that there were only 21 distinct phonemes available. In written language these can be denoted by the following characters: z, a, m, g, r, h, n, b, and ! serving as letters in the English sense, with -, ., ,, ?, and ! serving as punctuation. By combining the basic sounds the modern zombie is able to communicate additional sounds.
The use by zombies of the ! as a glottal stop or "i" sound does require the careful attention of humans to make sure that they're interpreting kiZombie correctly. Some zombies have been found to inhale when making the !, making it sound more like an "I" in English would sound

Orthography

kiZombie has no standard capitalization or punctuation. Capital letters indicate a rising tone which often signals a change in meaning, and the 'punctuation' marks actually indicate various grunts, which also carry specific meanings.
All utterances are preceded by a short silence, which is orthographically represented by a space. So 'I am a zombie' is spoken not *"ah z zam" but rather " ah z zam"

D: here is little taste of their vocabulary.

A!

A!rbagz (noun) (also Aarbagz)
Airbags
A!rmrh (also Aarmrh)
(noun) breath (Life-air)
(verb) to breathe

Numbers
To help zombies in speech, some linguists have proposed a punctuation based number system.
kiZombie would thus have a base 5 numbering system:
Be sure to check out the zombie food pyramid! <:

D: looks a lot like binary.

---
After a digit reaches 9, an increment resets it to 0 but also causes an increment of the next digit to the left. In binary, counting is the same except that only the two symbols 0 and 1 are used. Thus after a digit reaches 1 in binary, an increment resets it to 0 but also causes an increment of the next digit to the left:
0000,
0001, (rightmost digit starts over, and next digit is incremented)
0010, 0011, (rightmost two digits start over, and next digit is incremented)
0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, (rightmost three digits start over, and the next digit is incremented)
1000, 1001, ...
----

I hope I have expanded your intellectual horizons with this entry on zombese.
Brains... goooooddd! <:

And if you have not, read "World War Z" and the "Zombie Survival Guide"!

D.


-----
Tomorrow's entry will be on my impression of sign language. I knew enough before to get by on coffee dates with an attractive deaf woman.

setting up IPA keyboard as segue to HIOXian

http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/grammar/images/phonetic_alphabet.gif

http://www.rejc2.co.uk/ipakeyboard/

D: The Roman alphabet has 26 letters.
English has about 40 sounds.
So you immediately see the problem.
IPA solves this by using 'shift' on the keyboard to denote all the unusual symbols.
I'm not sure if this matches rare sounds, or is fairly random.
My point is that starting from scratch for keyboard layout would ultimately yield a faster typing speed. That is, we would need to reinvent the QWERTY keyboard for a phonetic basis.
Of course, this would be specific to any particular language.

I need to learn to use the IPA keyboard layout.
From there, it is an easy transition to HIOXian - should the script every be finished, LOL!
I'm still exploring variations. The most recent what-if involves only indicating lip movement for either the top or bottom lip.
The additional bar segment is redundant.
I need more bar segments to express somewhat abstract aspects of 'air quality'.
Plosive, fricative, aspirated, et al.

I am unsure if IPA or HIOXian would result in less characters than standard English spelling, particularly American.
Sure, there are many sounds that require 2 letters - TH or SH or CH, for example.
Conversely, some letters are essentially compound consonants.
1) Q - kw.
2) X - ks.
I don't think the argument of 'less letters' is one that will bear up under scrutiny.

Well, a best case scenario puts me in my grad thesis program next September.
I hoped to have a viable HIOXian cursive script worked out by then.
Obviously, I'll need to hash it out this winter and spring, and then try it out this summer.

Re: blog entry #100. I printed out the 1000 most common English words.
Made notes on them... and then lost the notes. Ack!
They'll turn up. Likely. Eventually.

comparison english/chinese diphthong phonotactics. hioxian...

Standard English diphthongs
RP (British) Australian American
GA Canadian
low [əʊ̯] [əʉ̯] [oʊ̯]
loud [aʊ̯] [æɔ̯] [aʊ̯] [aʊ̯]
lout [əʊ̯]1
lied [aɪ̯] [ɑe̯] [aɪ̯]
light [əɪ̯]1
lane [eɪ̯] [æɪ̯] [eɪ̯]
loin [ɔɪ̯] [oɪ̯] [ɔɪ̯]
loon [uː] [ʉː] [ʊu̯]4
lean [iː] [ɪi̯]4 [ɪi̯]4
leer [ɪə̯] [ɪə̯] [ɪɚ̯]3
lair [ɛə̯]2 [eː]2 [ɛɚ]3
lure [ʊə̯]2 [ʊə̯] [ʊɚ̯]3


Chinese (Mandarin).
http://www.fonetiks.org/sou3ch.html

Just lemme cut 'n paste here. Macs- I hate 'em.
SIlvia is rebuilding my PC so I can load up the Font design software for me again.
I get by with a little help from my friends...

D: OK so diphthongs- dual vowels- with phonetic meaning and lexemic content are important for Decimese.

Keep in mind that our vocabulary generating, based on the consonant-vowel (CV) syllable versus just a single C or V makes brevity difficult.
Most taxonomic languages suffer from being unclear when heard. If only one sound stands between 2 different meanings, then any background noise can be a problem.
E.g. if roboba is banana, while robobe is orange, then the rest of the word that is not different is of no help.
My CV-syllable basis is a compromise to retain the benefit of 'Ro' while minimizing the shortcomings.
Witness: if robocabam is banana, and robocatim is orange, then we have a much better chance of hearing the difference.
Metronyms seem to be a theme in Decimese.
I studied the top 1000 words of English - the most common ones- this month.
A taxonomic philosophical language like Ro fares pretty well with them.
I found I was trapped in my English language while trying to suss out a few concepts behind most words.
I kept digging up synonyms, or other common words. I can see 'thinking outside the box' will prove hard.
Things like 'kinship', 'social status/organization hierarchy', social prestige and such kept repeating as concepts.

------
Special syllables.
Anything that starts with an H can be used in this fashion. Hi, Ha, He-...
Similarly, mid-word, embedded inside a word, -hi-, -ha- ... can also denote 'special' meanings.
It's hard to explain with Decimese, since the premise is different that other languages.
Instead of starting at, say, a list of pronouns, I attempt to build them up from one iteration earlier.
I.e. primitive math, geometry (and therefore space) concepts.
MELTS- math, ethics, logic, time, space.
Lots of languages claim they have some special design basis or emphasis. How many deliver?
Math concepts - the space/time - really DO form the foundation behind my closed-class words.
-----

HIOXian. Insight.

I knew that English meaningfully uses voice/voiceless consonant pairs. E.g. P, B.
Chinese instead uses aspiration. P, Ph (breathy). They just use 'B' to stand in for Ph.
I just assumed this meant I'd need to constantly denote voiced/voiceless pairs and standard/heavily aspirated ones.
I was wrong. It means - and this is just in reference to Decimese - that I DON'T need to bother with either!
The HIOXian characters I was making were overly complicated to hand-write in cursive script.
Too many swirls and flourishes. It took too long.
Look at the basis for Decimese words. CV-CV-CV... (end with nasal consonant) - for standard lexicon.
A little more: The very first -word-initial- consonant *can* be voiceless, whereas the internal ones are not.
E..g bapan. (B-P pair).
Keep in mind that word boundaries will still be clear even without this. It is just one additional aid.
Enough of the world cannot use voiced/voiceless consonant pairs that to differentiate between them is a non-starter.
So now the HIOXian cursive script becomes much simpler.
I imagine that the computer font could also neglect both the English voiced/voiceless and Mandarin standard/aspirated dual aspects.
It would be less phonetic and accurate, strictly speaking. But would make for a more spartan and minimalist appearance.

I was having an additional problem with HIOXian - the opposite, in fact.
A character that is TOO minimal tended to have a series of disconnected parts. Worse, the letters could be on either the right OR left hand side of the character space. This is NOT a big deal with COURIER font (regular even spacing)- though a series of such unfortunate characters side-by-side could still cause confusion.
I found myself looking at a much earlier proposed design I had explored.
Let us look at the labial aspect - lips.
Trivia: labia is already plural. Labium is singular. Our bilateral human bodies favour the existence of a 'dual' plural option.
Decimese will be able to capture this nuance with its single/dual/plural system. Decimese will be looting various natural languages to increase the power and scope of its closed class function words.
Ergo, Decimese can express:
1) labium. one lip.
2) set of labium - labia.
3) labia-ez? Presumably multiple sets of the same kind. Or one human's grand total.
I put wayy too much thought into um language LOL. What can I say - I'm a cunning linguist! <:
Cuz the HIOXian letter is really nothing more than a stylized human head in cross-section, only slightly stylized so that it can almost claim to still be pictographic (a picture) instead of ideographic (an idea).
OK. so imagine this human head looking to the left. The lips are obviously the left-most anatomical part that is involved in speech. Logically, the teeth would be next.
When the lips are engaged with each other, for example in the bilabial nasal "M' sound, or the initial part of the plosive 'P', we need to show the two vertical left-side 'meaning segments - bars' in contact.
Here's where it gets interesting. The HIOXian letter, being a static and unchanging figure like any letter (unless we dress up a font with video animation) will have difficulty expressing a change of anatomical positions.
For example, M shows no change in bilabial lip position. Whereas the plosive P obviously has the lips part in the second part o the movement. The air flow bar segments indicate that the P is a plosive movement, with a sudden forceful exhalation.
However we see that the M and P sounds require different later expressions of lip position compared to each other.
I initially considered indicating when lips and teeth were retracted-not in contact. I could also do this with the tongue.
Anyway, instead of denoting retracted, the plosive P sound can use this second position of 'retracted' to denote the second half of the movement.
Note: I struggled with wide/narrow tongue positions. I realized this week that I can express this as an air-flow aspect, with the implication that the tongue is behaving in said fashion.
So the HIOXian figure (think old calculator display) has two bar segments on each facing.
The left/top is top lip/ retracted after movement. By extension, the right/top would be dentition - the top teeth - retracted after movement.
The top 1/2 of relatively vertical bar segments are reserved to indicate tongue position of contact on the mouth top.
(Lip) (Teeth) velar ridge - hard palate- soft palate.
I also struggled with this. Do I need to show adjacent physical contact between body parts?
I.e. if the fricative "F" is top teeth-bottom lip, then should those bar segments be in contact.
I eventually ruled this out cuz I need to free up some segments for additional meanings.
Ergo F would show the lower lip - left/low/vertical and upper teeth- mid/high/vertical bar segments.
There is no change in position during a fricative. Air resistance is denoted via the leftmost bar segments.
Back to the tongue.
I eventually realized that I really DON'T need to denote tongue contact point very specifically.
Only certain combinations are possible. For example, nobody will use the rear raised part of the tongue to make contact with the teeth. I suppose this IS possible. Certainly. an L sound can be had via multiple positions. Different phonete, yes, but same phoneme - same meaning. This is much like how aspiration is unused in English, while remaining present as a physical side effect of bioarticulation.

It is not phonemic in English. In English we say that the aspirated [p] of 'pill ' and the unaspirated [p] of 'spill' are allophone

D: whereas Mandarian Chinese DOES use the P/P(aspirated) pair for phonemic and hence lexical functionality.

Ok so back to the tongue.
So far I think I'm reserving the bottom half of the fairly vertical /|\ internal bar segments for the tongue.
It may be the I will need them to denote details about air flow. If so, I just use one - | - to denote the tongue and let the user figure out the rest.
A theme that is emerging about the HIOXian phonetic, ideographic, anatomical letter system is how optional many details can be. Want a fancy cursive? Indicate all optional details.
In a rush to short-hand yer notes in class while the prof drones on? Less detail.

An interesting side effect of HIOXian is the ability to mechanically compare to figures or a series in a word, and guess how the sounds will deform. This would be based on both sound sequence, as well as syllable stress. Rules to apply could be used without the user even understanding anything about co-articulation or any other aspect of linguistics.
Take, for example, the word "elephant"
e- le- phant. e-le-fant.
E! (primary stress) le (no stress) fant (secondary stress).
We can expect that the second syllable -le- will become truncated and deformed.
The 'eh' sound in colloquial speech become instead the 'schwa' sound from 'the' - think a really brief and weak 'uh'.
The diacritic in HIOXian - strictly optional BTW - would indicate syllable stress.

Origin of HIOXian - it was for a sci-fi short story I am writing. Basically about an after-the-holocaust 'Rosetta Stone'.

The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact which was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The stone is a Ptolemaic era stele with carved text made up of three translations of a single passage: two in Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and one in classical Greek. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta and contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing.

D: how do you get illiterate primitive savages to self-teach how to read???
With a picture of a human head in cross-section. And so HIOXian was born. That was a few years ago.
I'll post the story.

HIOXian diacritic and English syllable stress system.
---------------------------------------
There are various ways to denote syllable stress. Obviously a mono-syllable language has no need of it- Vietnamese?
English happens to use 3 parts:
1) pitch
2) duration
3) volume.
Normally, writing short-hand suggests a simple mark for primary and secondary stress would suffice.
Because in English this is linked to duration.
The diacritic is UNDER a consonant and OVER a vowel.
Why?
An option to speed up reading speed.
CV-CV is then very clear.
Anyway, a syllable MUST have a vowel. While a consonant is optional.
HOWEVER.
In Decimese, this is NOT true. No syllable is smaller than CV-.
Ergo, in Decimese we have the option to denote syllable stress on ... the CONSONANT.
Weird huh.
Why would we want to do that?
Tonal languages.
Lexical-tone, to be precise. Such as Mandarin Chinese.
Roughly speaking, a high or low or mid pitch changes word meaning.
ma ma ma ma - scold, hemp, horse, mother.
We then have the option later to explore this aspect on the vowel.

Anyway, so on a Decimese consonant, the diacritic (subcritic versus supercritic) would appear as:

| /|\ |
- -

Nice artwork, huh? <:

OK so the simplest thing to do would be to simply use the central post marked to show stress.
But then for large enough words in, say, English, we could not show both secondary and primary stress.
So we use - -. That way, we show timing- duration.
In a language like French, it does not change duration as part of syllable stress.
The additional vertical bars can be used to express *some* pitch and volume information, with 2 levels.
|/ \|
The central bar, well, again it is a nice 'cheat' to short-hand stress info. Primarily for cursive writing to keep it brief.

Suprasegmental meaning - for example, interrogative.
We raise the pitch on the last word in English to show a question.
The presence of 2 levels of pitch means - wait for it- we can start showing prosody date if we wish to also.

So we have a rough outline, in summary of
1) the main square HIOXian character which
a) contain initial anatomical position
b) shows change/movement.
c) shows air resistance and qualities
With a diacritic that shows
a) volume
b) duration
c) pitch.

My room is gonna be a mess. Make lotsa sheets of HIOXian blank characters, explore schemes.
Try to map 50-60 phonemes onto them. !
I am primarily interested, in descending order, in
1) Decimese
2) English
3) Chinese
being mapped well onto the characters.
Since
4) IPA is a consideration, I'd like to be able to express more nuance.
I've finally accepted that I cannot supplant International Phonetic Alphabet in the core character plus diacritic.
I'd hafta use other variations of the HIOXian shape to do so.
For example, the left OR right half of the HIOXian letter plus sub/super diacritic.
OR: one of three tiers, if we treat the HIOXian character space as a stack of 3 diacritics.
But that is for later. I have wayy to much work as it is.
Practically speaking, my first use will be taking notes myself in HIOXian minimalist cursive writing.
That means 2) English is in fact what I should focus on for now.
Only by using my system will I get a feel for its strengths and limitations. Then I can maybe refine it.
One day, maybe it will be ready for primetime.
One day... year.... decade.... lifetime?
D.