Review of top 1000 words. Espo.

D - I wrote out and analysed the top 1000 most common English words. Then translated all of them into Espo. Never say "Esper***o". It attracts the spamming zealots.
The top 100 words were very illuminating. It pretty much summed up everyday human concerns.
Words - verbs - say, think, know, like, make, take.
I -he - it. Which -when -what. Well- good - great. Time - man - thought - day - house- life. Hand and eye. Water and oil.

I thought word frequency followed Zipf's Law, but it follows another one even more closely.

"... in the Brown Corpus, the word "the" is the most frequently occurring word, and by itself accounts for nearly 7% of all word occurrences (69,971 out of slightly over 1 million). True to Zipf's Law, the second-place word "of" accounts for slightly over 3.5% of words... Zipf himself proposed that neither speakers nor hearers using a given language want to work any harder than necessary to reach understanding, and the process that results in approximately equal distribution of effort leads to the observed Zipf distribution."

D - there are many elements of natural language, spoken and written orthography, which are already optimized after a fashion.

D - but Benford's Law seems to come closer.

"Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 about 30% of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than 5% of the time. (see image)"

D - translating the 1000 English words to Espo took roughly 12 hours. Early on, closed class function words are highly represented. Particularly prepositions, articles and conjunctions. Later on, most words are standard lexical entries.

D - observations: the evaluative words, particularly for comparative and superlative, are assigned special short forms. For example, good - better -best. Bad - worse -worst. These are closely followed by similar words for spatial size and their metaphorical equivalents for time.

D - here are a few pet peeves about Espo.
- This = tiu c*i (and these)
- Any = ajna, iu, tiu aux alia
- Better - pli bona (and best)
- Under - mal-supre de
- Except - escepte de (C is a tongue-twister)
- Worse is, well, worse (pli mal-bona)
- Otherwise- se ne
- Beside - flanke de
- Although - malgraux de.
Big Z was on to a good thing with modular construction. But a word used often also needs to be short. And only one word. It needed more effort.

D - thoughts. I think a very limited and basic Somali-style preposition system could benefit from optional detail from the MELTS acronym system - Math, Space-Time, Logic-ethics. This core approach also affords us the brevity to prevent excessive wordiness in basic concepts.

D - English is full of misleading cues to lead the unwary astray. Take "stranger", for example. One might initially assume that it is the comparative version of "strange" and that there may exist a verb "to strange". Nope.

I have much to think about. The only vocabulary I have any interest in developing would involve the concepts underlying these top 1000 English words. And to do so with more clarity and brevity than Espo has. Brevity for Espo was impossible, even with their systemic / derivational approach, once they settled on familiar Euro-derived roots. For example, "iras (to go)" never involves the IR part devoid of some vowel-cored suffix. Because of this, simply listing a single consonant in a taxonomic fashion was possible. Iras could have been the root 'r, so "to go" could be 'ri. Instead, we immediately have the onerous burden to use at least 2 syllables for even the most rudimentary of verbs. This is particularly disappointing regarding modal or primary verbs.
There are also multiple examples of largely redundant homonyms in Espo where there was no need of them. It was simply not designed with economy of lexical entries in mind.

S'ok. I'll do better.

math without number words?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120221104037.htm

According to University of Miami (UM) anthropological linguist Caleb Everett, the Piraha are surprisingly unable to represent exact amounts. Their language contains just three imprecise words for quantities: Hòi means "small size or amount," hoì, means "somewhat larger amount," and baàgiso indicates to "cause to come together, or many." Linguists refer to languages that do not have number specific words as anumeric...

The work was motivated by contradictory results on the numerical performance of the Piraha. An earlier article reported the people incapable of performing simple numeric tasks with quantities greater than three, while another other showed they were capable of accomplishing such tasks...

The people were not able to do the one-to-one correspondence, when the numbers were greater than two or three.

The findings support the idea that language is a key component in processes of the mind. "When they've been introduced to those words, their performance improved, so it's clearly a linguistic effect, rather than a generally cultural factor,"

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D - better language... better mind? Reducing demands on both the short and long term memories. Hmm...

French to remove married woman distinction

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mademoiselle-given-boot-under-new-french-rules/article2345894/

Forget what you learned in French class about “madame” and “mademoiselle.” The French government now says women’s marital status shouldn’t matter, at least when it comes to this country’s far-reaching bureaucracy.

A new circular from the prime minister’s office Tuesday orders officials to phase out the use of “mademoiselle” on administrative documents.

Until now, a woman has been required to identify herself as a married “madame” or an unmarried “mademoiselle” on everything from tax forms to insurance claims and voting cards. France offers no neutral option like the English “Ms.”

Men don’t face this issue: Their only option is “monsieur,” married or not.

It’s all the more strange given that French young people widely shun matrimony, and more than half of French children are born to unmarried parents.

Feminist groups have been pushing for the abolition of the “mademoiselle” option for years and hailed the circular.

“Everywhere we are asked to declare our marital status. This is not imposed on men, it’s not important whether they are married,” said Julie Muret of the group Osez le Feminisme.

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D - yup, double standard. I caught some hell this week for using the term "spinster". She was correct- there is no male equivalent. I suggested we adopt spinster for male and spinstress for female.
Thinking about the terms some more, in contrast to "bachelor", spinster denotes a past and present continuing state. In this regard, it resembles my proposed construction for complex verb tense forms. A term for bachelor that denotes continuity to present (was and is) would suffice. This would involve incorporating the verb form into complex noun names.
A brief term for "spousal" or married would help in honorific titles.

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(Wiki)
Madamoiselle - Etymology - Contraction of ma demoiselle (my little lady).

Spinster - Etymology - From spin +‎ -ster, from an historical notion of unmarried women spinning thread for a living.

The word is from Old French bachelier, "knight bachelor", a young squire in training, ultimately from Latin baccalaris, a very low ranking vassal . The Old French term crossed into English around 1300, referring to one belonging to the lowest stage of knighthood. Knights bachelor were either poor vassals who could not afford to take the field under their own banner, or knights too young to support the responsibility and dignity of knights banneret. From the 14th century, the term was also used for a junior member of a guild (otherwise known as "yeomen") or university; hence, an ecclesiastic of an inferior grade, for example, a young monk or even recently appointed canon

Gb or GB? 10 or 2 base units?

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/phasers_vs_blasters_and_8_other_distinctions_every_nerd_should_know

This one has been burning the face off of copyeditors for years. GB stands for gigabyte, which as any computer user will tell you, one can never have enough of. Depending on the context it is being used in, gigabyte can mean a number of things. If you’re talking digital data storage which is measured in bytes, a gigabyte is 1, 000, 000, 000, bytes. That’s 729 3.5” floppy disks worth of data. The term is also used as a standard of measurement for RAM size and Depending on who you talk to, a gigabyte may also be the name applied to 1, 073,741,824 bytes. Go figure.

The term Gigabit is also a quantitative measurement for digital data—one gigabit is equivalent to 128 megabytes—but more commonly, it is used in reference to the transfer of information over the a Local Area Network (LAN). Gigabit internet is based on the Ethernet Frame format protocol, providing a scorching fast data transfer rate of one billion bits per second.

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D - a # naming convention that allows either 2 or 10 to be inserted into the name would allow this.
I.e.
1) a 10-base Giga - 1,000,000,000
2) a 2-base giga - 1,073,741,824

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(Wiki)
Examples
Examples of logarithmic units include common units of information and entropy, such as the bit [log 2] and the byte 8[log 2] = [log 256], also the nat [log e] and the ban [log 10]; units of relative signal strength magnitude such as the decibel 0.1[log 10] and bel [log 10], neper [log e], and other logarithmic-scale units such as the Richter scale point [log 10] or (more generally) the corresponding order-of-magnitude unit sometimes referred to as a factor of ten or decade (here meaning [log 10], not 10 years).

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D - bit and bytes, and nats and bans are all ripe for a rational naming convention that hints at the unit type it measures.

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The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit that indicates the ratio of a physical quantity (usually power or intensity) relative to a specified or implied reference level. A ratio in decibels is ten times the logarithm to base 10 of the ratio of two power quantities.[1] A decibel is one tenth of a bel, a seldom-used unit.

The definitions of the decibel and bel use base 10 logarithms. The neper, an alternative logarithmic ratio unit sometimes used, uses the natural logarithm (base e).[3]

A change in power ratio by a factor of 10 is a 10 dB change. A change in power ratio by a factor of two is approximately a 3 dB change.

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http://www.surfnetkids.com/go/safety/348/earbud-safety-with-volume-and-decibel-levels/

For example, 8 hours at 85 dB causes as much damage as 4 hours at 88 dB, 2 hours at 91 dB, or just 15 minutes at 100 dB.

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D - IMHO, switching to a 1 sound-unit = double power of sound seems sensible. From a safety point of view, this makes for easier measurements.

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(Wiki)
Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake.

In all cases, the magnitude is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger and corresponds to an energy release of √1000 ≈ 31.6 times greater than one that measures 4.0

the math of music

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/02/23/music-patterns-mcgill.html

Daniel Levitin, a scientist who studies the human brain, did a computer analysis of music in many different styles composed over the past 400 years.

From Johann Sebastian Bach to Scott Joplin to Elvis, this pattern is not something we are conscious of as we listen, but seems to touch off a response in the human brain.

The research team, which included Vinod Menon of Stanford University, found that all the musical compositions are composed of repeating motifs that reflect the overall structure of the work itself. At the same time, each composer had his or her own highly individual rhythmic signature.

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D - I found a link to some guy trying to quantify the emotional content of music based on pitch changes.
Maybe a little bit kooky - but promising.

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http://parkertichko.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/do-tempo-and-pitch-modulation-elicit-emotional-responses-in-music/

These researchers conclude that other intervals aside from the generic major / minor third (scale degree 1 and 3) might play a role in the perception of emotional value. Thus, this study is important as it implies that perhaps a more universal cognitive process, one that is not exclusive to the major / minor third interval, but rather a generalized neural correlate, might administer musical emotion.

the fluently bilingual brain

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/fluent-english-speakers-translate-into-chinese-automatically.html

The subjects in Zhang’s experiments were all Chinese students at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. For the study, each person was shown pairs of words. The first word flashed on the computer screen so quickly that the person didn’t realize they’d seen it. The second word appeared for longer; the person was supposed to hit a key indicating whether it was a real word as quickly as possible. This was just a test to see how quickly they were processing the word.
The trick was this: Although everything in the test was in English, in some cases, the two words actually had a connection – but only if you know how they’re written in Chinese. So, for example, the first word might be “thing,” which is written 东西in Chinese, and the second might be “west,” which is written 西in Chinese. The character for “west” appears in the word “thing,” but these two words are totally unrelated in English.
Zhang found that, when two words shared characters in Chinese, participants processed the second word faster – even though they had no conscious knowledge of having seen the first word in the pair. Even though these students are fluent in English, their brains still automatically translate what they see into Chinese. This suggests that knowledge of a first language automatically influences the processing of a second language, even when they are very different, unrelated languages.

http://www.longwoods.com/newsdetail/2341

All bilingual children – regardless of the languages they speak – show cognitive advantages over their English-only peers, although they may experience weakness in areas like vocabulary acquisition, finds a new study out of York University...

(D - I have mentioned before that very early second language acquisition can contribute to a stutter.)

The study reports that bilingual children differ from each other and from monolingual children in how they develop language and cognitive skills through the early school years. Children who grow up speaking two languages generally have slower language acquisition in each language than children raised speaking just one language. However, they have better “metalinguistic” development that gives them a deeper understanding of the structure of language, a skill that’s important for literacy. They also perform better on tests of non-verbal executive control, which measure the ability to focus attention where necessary without being distracted, and to shift attention when required.

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D - executive control is a huge predictor of academic and workplace success! This trumps the other minor drawbacks of a bilingual upbringing. Bilingual are a bit slower to access unilingual-specific material.

hyperpolyglots revisited

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/video_meet_the_boss_who_speaks_18_languages_8_of_them_fluently

But he says it is difficult to define hyperpolyglots and polyglots because essentially it has to be about speaking and knowing rather than reading and writing. In some cases literacy is not possible, or a language does not have an alphabet.

So what enables hyperpolyglots to seemingly pick up a new language at the push of a button?

Erard says it is hard to explain, but whatever an individual's biographical reasons are, he believes there is something that distinguishes hyperpolyglots neurologically.

"They have a neurological hardware that responds to the world, that's fed by the world, that is suited to a pattern that is recognition-heavy, sound-heavy and memory-heavy - that is very structured, and also very sociable.

Manuel probably spoke three languages - Basil Fawlty just the one
"They have an ability to switch between languages very easily, and that involves cognitive skills which are often heritable," he adds.

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D - Withers thinks formal fluency in his first tongue is key.

" "Withers thinks that fluency in one language allows people to accumulate others more easily.

"Most monoglots in this country aren't really able to explain English in terms such as the perfect past tense and past tense. When you learn about cases and tenses and grammatical formations, I think the tool box is there for other languages," he says." "

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D - England's botched attempt at second-language instructions resembles my own failed attempt to learn French in my youth.

"In the UK, where there has been a growing anxiety over the failure to learn additional languages, Gillon might seem to be a bit of an anomaly. More and more children have been giving up languages since the last government made learning foreign languages optional in England from the age of 14...

"Most people say it's easier to pick up languages when you're younger," says David Green, of University College London, who specialises in bilingualism.

"But people can learn languages at any point in their lives. Being immersed in a language is important. Personality is a contributing factor too - not being able to tolerate feeling foolish from making inevitable errors will make learning a new language a difficult process." "

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D - two themes appear here:
1) a mother tongue that is rife with exceptions and irregulars which occupies much of primary school time to master, and
2) the related importance to learn a second language while still a child.
D - I did not encounter French until I moved in Grade 7. By then, I had entered puberty and lost much brain plasticity. That, combined with no mental aptitudes that would help with language would contribute my failure to achieve fluency. I took French from grade 7 to 13 (TWICE!). So in 14 years of sporadic teaching all I did was waste the taxpayer's coin. This is a very common story.

D - now, the aux-lang angle:
1) a good IAL learned second reduces anxiety about learning an additional natural language afterwards
2) the IAL can be bundled with good (and student-customized) language study habits - something I never had
3) there is no cultural group that will inform an IAL student that they are not saying something that is technically correct yet culturally incorrect. I mean a lack of inscrutable and unknowable idiom and jargon.
In the case of Interlingua (and to a degree, Espo), it has direct benefits to learn Romance-derived European languages afterwards. This makes it ideal for an Anglophone to pick those up.

D - one could promote my CVN as a 'gateway language' to Chinese if I tailor the grammar to be compatible.

D - contrast the England example with the Australian one.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/demand-for-asia-study-overhaul-20081011-4ysm.html

The draft report, prepared for a national conference backed by the Federal Government later this month, highlights the difficulties confronting Mr Rudd's ambition for Australia "to be the most Asian-literate nation in the Western world".

The report attributes the drop-out rate to three factors. Students studying Chinese as a second language are "overwhelmed" in assessments by "strong numbers" of students who have Chinese as a first language.
Second, they don't develop sufficient proficiency because of the difficulty in learning Chinese and the inadequate time set aside for it.
Finally, they are trying to learn Chinese "in an often unsupportive environment at school, in their family, and in the community".
The report suggests Australia has strong reasons for improving its Chinese language skills, citing China's size, proximity, economic importance, cultural significance, and the fact it is a major source of migrants, students and tourists.

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D - childhood immersion would make sense. Chinese is so different from English! But how are the Chinese doing at learning English?

http://middlekingdomlife.com/guide/chinese-education-system-students-english-teacher.htm

Understanding The Mind-set of Chinese Students
The social pressure on Chinese children to perform well in school is overwhelming: not only their futures, but the futures of their parents entirely depend on it. In fact, and particularly in light of China's 1979 single-child policy, excellent performance in school is typically the only expectation that parents in China have of their child—and it has proven to be a formidable one...
Suicide is the leading cause of death among China's young adults aged 18 to 35, with college students representing the fastest growing segment. In 2008, a record-breaking 63 students from 38 different universities ended their lives due to academic pressure, a sense of social isolation (common among students from the countryside who are studying in major cities), peer ridicule, and fear of future unemployment...
Students who do not become overtly suicidal may, in another attempt at escape, become addicted to technology. It is currently estimated by the China Youth Association for Network Development that one out of ten Chinese aged 13- to 30-years old is addicted to the Internet, especially online gaming.
For starters, and as a rule, your students will be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. Many will have difficulty even staying awake in your class, let alone attending to the material. Related, because they have such little discretionary time, they will typically attempt to use their required attendance in your oral English class as a "time-out" or break period.
Related and second, you may have noticed that foreign languages, or any other disciplines in the humanities for that matter, are not among the list of Zhou Enlai's Four Modernizations, the foundation that drives the educational system in China.
There are, of course, exceptions to this aforementioned rule. Some students are Western-bound (they plan to study or work abroad) or otherwise perceive a real need to acquire functional English language skills, and they will comprise your best and most motivated students—but they are in the minority
What all of this amounts to is that, for the most part, the majority of your students will be unmotivated to learn English and, usually, are poorly prepared to do so even if they are genuinely interested.

http://www.chinatownconnection.com/us-listed-chinese-companies.htm

China has the highest English literacy rate in the world among non-English speaking countries. Chinese kids are required to have English language as a mandatory course from elementary school all the way to graduate school. That's over 10 years of English language study in a Chinese kid's life.