on latex notation, text editors and keyboard design

http://porthos.ist.utl.pt/docs/revtex/manend/node3.html#SECTION00011100000000000000

D: I was impressed by how Latex allows IPA characters.
Those are some sensible keyboard shortcuts for IPA.

D: Look at a typical text editor interface.
The options available are not reflected on a standard qwerty keyboard.
The keyboard has many obscure and largely unused symbols hogging space.

(I'll look at keybaord layouts another day.)

Anyway, my Google blog has bold - italic.
My Google e-mail has bold-italic-underline- size -font- colour - highlight colour.
Hmm, it seems to get confused if I change text size after picking colours.
Which is a neat artistic result.

My point? We should have the reverse of mouse gestures.
Do with a button on the keyboard what we now need a mouse to do.
A keyboard should have those text options readily available.
It would be brilliant for math and science notation.
It would be compatible with a standard online text editor, as well as word processors.
A similar process with diacrtics would help with a generic universal Romance-language modified ROman alphabet system.

French accents:
Hmm turns out French has 5 accents.
I never did figure out what they meant.
That might explain why I nearly failed French after taking it 8 years.
I still cannot speak it.

I did memorize alt-0233 for the word resumé. I was tired of typing the verb ree-zoom.

Anyway, capital letters leave space for accents. Nor do small letters that have some upright element.
All in all, pretty poor design.

A qwerty keyboard cannot easily be reduced to half the characters.
Sure, voiced/voiceless pairs such as BP are natural candidates.
But this relationship is pretty opaque with Roman letters to most laypeople.
'

70% of web users don't speak English

http://globalthoughtz.com/2010/10/70-of-world-internet-users-dont-speak-english-greig/

D - one of the potential benefits of an IAL (international auxiliary language) is cost.
Advertisers can use a one-size-fits-all approach.
Government bodies,particularly international ones, can save a bundle on translations.

Then there are subtle costs.
New immigrants to Canada are offered language lessons. But often they wish to start working right away so they don't 'waste time'.
Which ultimately constrains their ability to work effectively.
Unless one has a job that involves sitting in an isolated cubicle, and even then does not involve reading, this is a mistake.

A few years ago, I participated in a YWCA-sponsored 'Coming to Canada' improv skit theatre project. I learned facts that made me sympathetic to newcomers. For example, sometimes Canada invites them here due to their educational qualifications- and then won't recognize this when the get here.
Conversely, I found they collectively engaged in a mental trap about discrimination.
They adamantly refused to admit that speaking English in a clear and concise manner is a job skill. Ergo, every time they fail to get a job it must be... DISCRIMINATION!
Yes, they actually believed that.
First of all, the ability to communicate (both ways) in a spoken and written form IS a job skill. The inability to do so is a valid and legitimate reason to not employ somebody.
Second, it may be that our language lessons are failing them.
I am of the opinion that addressing accent/dialect is MORE important than the usual 'nuts and bolts' approach of teaching grammar and syntax.
I for one have a mild auditory processing problem. Misplacing the stress and changing cadence on words I know is often enough to render them unintelligible to me.

NEWS: after only a YEAR, I have finally finished reading Chomsky's SPE. For most people, I suggest you just read a summary of his language rule results.
Even where these rules are summarized with page reference in SPE, those pages still are almost indecipherable as examples.
I am completely unable to think in 'notation'.
Meaning all the efficient short-hand expressions in the book might as well be greek to me. The section on phonology was worth its weight in gold, though.

Teaching simple example by large groups samples might be useful.
I.e.
1) nail down English phonemes in one syllable words. Work up to diphthongs n' consonant clusters.
2) at 2 syllables, show the rules for noun and verb and adjective.
3) use lots and lots of examples.
4) gradually introduce examples of how derivatives change the stress.
5) gradually show how co-articulation changes the actually spoken word.
Notice that grammar and syntax are not even mentioned.
Knowing 1000 words in English with perfect grammar and syntax remains totally useless if one cannot say those 1000 words in a manner that is understood.
Yet ethnic accent is the very last thing to persist after learning English.
It should be the very FIRST thing to go.
I know this is very hard for an adult brain. But it is rewarding.

Aside: I am intrigued by the idea of a 3rd tier of pronunciation- the unspoken secret underlying representation.
I wonder if colour-coded stacking of hiox figures could capture narrow (IPA), wide (standard) and this underlying mode, all in one fell swoop?

An alternative aux-lang to English, or course, sacrifices the richness and quirkiness of a natural language for the stilted but accessible aux-lang.

I did find Q and X particularly to detract from C's claim of English 'optimal orthography'. Ending a syllable in X has a KS sound. This consonant cluster can often make a syllable strong, even with a weak vocalic nucleus.
X deprives the reader of the consonant-cluster cue necessary.
Such aux-langs as Ceqli sensibly recycle X and Q for other sounds.

The staggering difficulty of mastering English remains a point in favour of a world (or nation, or even province/group) aux-lang.
Saying 'learn English or go home', though terribly tempting when dealing with ethnic truck drivers (as I do at work), remains a superficial response to a complex issue.
Whether learning a simple aux-lang would amount to more work than teaching passable English to untalented adults on a large scale is open to debate.
I suspect it would be viewed as a sensible investment, paying huge and long-term dividends. At least after the fact.

An ideal aux-lang for this purpose faces the 2 constraints, opposed to each other of,
1) too complicated to learn for many backgrounds, and
2) LCD- lowest common denominator- leaving very few elements to communicate with.
Lacking nuance or brevity as a result.
These are issues each IAL designer must struggle with.
Espo has chosen problem 1).
I have chosen problem 2), but hope ot mitigate it through very careful early planning.
Cheers.

just English irregular plural nouns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Almost-regular_plurals

ox oxen (particularly when referring to a team of draft animals, sometimes oxes in nonstandard American English)
child children (actually earlier plural "cildra/cildru" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural)
brother brethren (archaic plural of brother; earlier "brether" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural; now used in fraternal order)
cow kine (archaic/regional; actually earlier plural "kye" [cf. Scots "kye" - "cows"] plus -en suffix, forming a double plural)

D: variants of -en.

No plural difference:

deer
moose
sheep
bison
salmon
pike
trout
fish
swine

Ablaut plurals

The plural is sometimes formed by simply changing the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called ablaut (these are sometimes called mutated plurals):
foot feet
goose geese
louse lice
man men
mouse mice
tooth teeth
woman women

Greek and Latin derived:

* Final a becomes -ae (also -æ), or just adds -s:

alumna alumnae

* Final ex or ix becomes -ices (pronounced /ɨsiːz/), or just adds -es:

index indices /ˈɪndɨsiːz/ or indexes

* Final is becomes es (pronounced /iːz/):

axis axes /ˈæksiːz/

* Final ies remains unchanged:

series series

* Final on becomes -a:

automaton automata

* Final um becomes -a, or just adds -s:

addendum addenda

* Final us becomes -i (second declension, [aɪ]) or -era or -ora (third declension), or just adds -es (especially in fourth declension, where it would otherwise be the same as the singular):

alumnus alumni

* Final as in one case of a noun of Greek origin changes to -antes:

Atlas Atlantes (statues of the hero); but

* Some nouns of French origin add an -x, which may be silent or pronounced /z/:

beau beaux

* Nouns of Hebrew origin add -im or -ot (generally m/f) according to native rules, or just -s:

cherub cherubim/cherubs

Words better known in the plural

Some words of foreign origin are much better known in the plural; usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic or actually incorrect or worse[18] by some speakers. In common usage, the original plural is considered the singular form. In many cases, back-formation has produced a regularized plural.
Original singular Original plural/
common singular Common plural
agendum agenda9 agendas
alga algae algae
biscotto biscotti biscotti
candelabrum candelabra candelabras
datum10 data data (mass noun)
graffito graffiti graffiti (mass noun)
insigne insignia insignias
opus opera operas
panino panini paninis (currently gaining use)
paparazzo paparazzi paparazzi
spaghetto spaghetti spaghetti

D - having fun yet?

Chinese 'xie' for plural (some) seems nice.
But then they have special words for plurals of many many singular words.

In English, herd of cattle et al.

letter font and material recall

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666

Researchers at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information about different types of aliens - and found that those reading harder fonts recalled more when tested 15 minutes later.

They argue that schools could boost results by simply changing the font used in their basic teaching materials.

12 is the loveliest number. # naming conventions.

Twelves appears in many places and many guises.
It flies in the face of our modern sensibilities.
We just assume that a 1-size-fits-all 10-base system is the way to go.

I will make my case for the need to name #s simply right up to 12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

In physics, the Planck length, denoted ℓP, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616252(81)×10−35 meters. It is a base unit in the system of Planck units.

D - metric-style prefixes to a power-multiple of 3x12 is desirable to easily encapsulate the Planck length. So instead of yocto at 10 -24, we could have something else at 10 -36- Planck length territory.

The imperial system is still widely used. I worked in construction, and can tell you we still do everything with the Imperial measuring system.
We all know inch-feet-yards-miles.
There are a few more but those are the important ones.
Once we reach lengths smaller than inches, we typically use a fraction-2-power system.
I.e. 1/2 ,1/4, 1/8, 1/16ths...
Here we see the importance of a to-the-power # naming convention.
That is also true of the metric-style prefix names, as well as the #s 1,10, and 100.
Really, 10 and 1000 with various powers are the basis for our modern decimal/metric system.

Twelve also appears in time, and has resisted every effort to displace it.

Behind this use of 12 is the backdrop of the sexagesimal system - 60 base.
Sexagesimal (base 60) is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, it was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and it is still used — in a modified form — for measuring time, angles, and the geographic coordinates that are angles.

The number 60, a highly composite number, has twelve factors, namely { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 } of which two, three, and five are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified. For example, one hour can be divided evenly into sections of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 12 minutes, 10 minutes, six minutes, five minutes, etc. Sixty is the smallest number that is divisible by every number from one to six. This is because 60 = 2 × 2 × 3 × 5 = 4 × 3 × 5.

D: take a circle with 360 degrees. Dividing progressively in half, we get 360,180,90, 45 .... 22.5.
Whereas a 100-base system would divide to 100, 50, 25, .... 12.5.
To avoid decimals/fractions for one more division, we'd hafta go up to a 1000 base system.

The importance of the 12-base system is apparent in our English # naming conventions.
We have eleven, twelve and only then the 13-19 "teen" ending.

Finally, we have our 360 (plus a bit) days of the year. Our calendar has 12 months.

Very few aux-langs think to make # names simple beyond 10.
We see above that there are many benefits to a # naming convention that is compact to 12 for brevity of speech.

As always, take Espo for example. ( I dare not utter utter this demonic language's true name - it attracts spammers! <:)
16 Dek ses (one ten and six)
Lojban, et al typically also fall into this trap.
Lojban cycles through the aeiou vowel set twice to reach names to 10.

One last thought. In time, we have the following naming conventions.
Second-minute-hour-day-week-month-year. Only day and year have any natural-world meaning.
We see a similar progression of names for Imperial distances.
The option of a measuring-unit system with a 1-7 or so scale for names, much like #s, may be desirable.
Alternatively, a day-less-1-scale (hour) system could be attractive.
Possibly, a naming convention that uses very brief terms for common multiples could work. E.g. Second is day /24 hours/ 60 minutes/ 60 seconds.

I vaguely entertained a notion to use a time unit convention for the day that reflects geometry. I.e. 360 degrees vs 12 hours. That is 30 degrees per hour. Each degree would be 2 minutes. From there, arc minutes and arc seconds.
It'd be interesting to show time on an old hand-based clock for the year.
The best argument I've heard for why our time-unit second is a second is the rate that the human heart beats at.

Cheers.

how many root words is enough?

http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/esperanto.htm

From the base of 15,000 to 20,000 root words - once can combine roots and suffixes to form over 150,000 words in Esperanto.

There is an extensive set of suffixes that can be added to word roots to allow various shades of meaning or newly derived forms; compound words are also used. (Source: "Esperanto," Britannica.com)

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Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.

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Finally, a look at an 'extreme language' - Toki Pona, with very few roots.
I suspect 'simple' translates to 'extremely limited', 'ambiguous' or 'extremely wordy for clarification'. But to capture Tao thought, that's fine.

The entire language has only 123 words

http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/What_is_Toki_Pona%3F

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OK - regarding Esperanto, in what world is 'only 15,000 roots to make 150,000 words' a boast?
Honestly, I sometimes wonder what Esperantists are smoking.
I oversimplify, since a compound word will contain multiple roots/stems/words, but that means that a root is used on average to make only 10 words.
I suppose one can claim that this results in precision - the disambiguation claim of Lojban, ironically enough, though Lobjan has only 1/10 the the roots to work with.

Esperanto- suffixes to allow various shades of meaning.

D: ok, why suffixes? Let's look at English as the de facto world standard. The power on the throne. The folks you need to suck up to...

Well English uses both prefixes and suffixes. Given that suffixes have a certain ordering, one can argue infixes in the middle also.
In English, the prefixes vary the word meaning in nuance, but do not change the grammatical category. For example, view, review, preview.
Whereas suffixes often change the part of grammar. For example, heavy, heaviness.
So the unexamined assumption by Espo that suffixes are the only way to go is mistaken.

For compounded nouns and whatnot, I figure a middle infix is the way to go. Something derived from a simple preposition system.
Again, my example: spaceman.
Do we mean an astronaut? (Literally, a sailor of the stars, or thereabouts.)
Or... do we man an alien extraterrestial.
A man to space. From space?
Here we see the rich potential for using middle-position infixes for compounded lexical items.
How about a human being designed to be suited to orbital existence? A man FOR space.


"Thus the acquirement of this rich, mellifluous, universally-comprehensible language, is not a matter of years of laborious study, but the mere light amusement of a few days. " (Zamenhof)

D; Oh, the bitter tears as I laugh at that! I grind to a halt mid-intro-book after months of study. Like I said, a language by a linguist, for linguists.
That is a variant of a joke about the RPG Rolemaster - a game by an accountant, for accountants...

----
So far, Espo requires:
1) a linguistic background that does not have a rigid word order and
2) is heavily infixing - but particularly with suffixes.
So we are talking about a narrow margin of language speakers.
Leaving... polyglot linguists as the only likely consumers of this language.
Exactly what we see in the comment section.
This is a language doomed to be stillborn.

BTW, Barker, talking about a 'thriving online community' is a polite way of saying an Esperantist is unlikely to find any other speakers in their physical region.
That is NOT a pitch for Espo being widely adopted.
It is a condemnation for the poor early adopters.
But they've had the problem of being early adopters for... a frickin' CENTURY.

D: back to the (low-balled) ONLY 15,000 root word boast - boast? That's a boast?!

I'll reread the most common 1000 English words. And I'll point out which concepts are re-used constantly. THESE are the words that should be emphasized in any initial small group of root words to learn.
This initial step would have addressed some issues of Z's for Espo.

I reiterate my test. The same # of basic-literacy speakers as Espo in 20 years, or bust.
How? 1/10th the interested parties. But 10x easier to learn.

The year is 2010. In 20 years, it'll be 2030. Growing up with an aux-lang for kids to be native speakers means the children will be around 15 for 2045.
The UN's 100th anniversary.
So I have ten years to nail down the basic design with beta tests and open source help.
And then 10 years to recruit learners for the finished product.
NOT beta-testers.
NOT the Espo approach of treating the entire first generation of early adopters as beta-testers!

D: update. Still chipping away at SPE by Chomsky. Gawd so hard...
I should have found a Cole's notes version.
My head hurts.

better than metric. planck measuring system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale

The nature of reality at the Planck scale is the subject of much debate in the world of physics, as it relates to a surprisingly broad range of topics. It may, in fact, be a fundamental aspect of the universe. In terms of size, the Planck scale is unimaginably small (many orders of magnitude smaller than a proton). In terms of energy, it is unimaginably 'hot' and energetic. The wavelength of a photon (and therefore its size) decreases as its frequency or energy increases. The fundamental limit for a photon's energy is the Planck energy, for the reasons cited above

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D: I speak facetiously, but this'd be our best bet for a unit system compatible with advanced aliens.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

Planck units are often semi-humorously referred to by physicists as God's units. They eliminate anthropocentric arbitrariness from the system of units: some physicists argue that communication with extraterrestrial intelligence would have to use such a system of units to make common reference to scale. Unlike the meter and second, which exist as fundamental units in the SI system for historical reasons (in human history), the Planck length and Planck time are conceptually linked at a fundamental physical level.


Planck length Length (L) l_\text{P} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar G}{c^3}} 1.616 252(81) × 10−35 m
Planck mass Mass (M) m_\text{P} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar c}{G}} 2.176 44(11) × 10−8 kg
Planck time Time (T) t_\text{P} = \frac{l_\text{P}}{c} = \frac{\hbar}{m_\text{P}c^2} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar G}{c^5}} 5.391 24(27) × 10−44 s
Planck charge Electric charge (Q) q_\text{P} = \sqrt{4 \pi \varepsilon_0 \hbar c} 1.875 545 870(47) × 10−18 C
Planck temperature Temperature (Θ) T_\text{P} = \frac{m_\text{P} c^2}{k_B} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar c^5}{G k_B^2}} 1.416 785(71) × 1032 K

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This would be as provocative as switching to a decimal-based time system from our present sexagesimal one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

Decimal time was introduced as part of the French Republican Calendar, which, in addition to decimally dividing the day, divided the month into three décades of 10 days each; this calendar was abolished at the end of 1805. The start of each year was determined according to which day the autumnal equinox occurred, in relation to true or apparent solar time at the Paris Observatory. Decimal time would also have been reckoned according to apparent solar time, depending on the location it was observed, as was already the practice generally for the setting of clocks.

The French made another attempt at the decimalization of time in 1897, when the Commission de décimalisation du temps was created by the Bureau des Longitudes, with the mathematician Henri Poincaré as secretary. The commission proposed a compromise of retaining the 24-hour day, but dividing each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. The plan did not gain acceptance and was abandoned in 1900.

D: it failed for the simple reason that folks got one day of rest per 10 not 7 days!

However, switching to a perpetual 3 day weekend today would mitigate this.

Conversions

There are exactly 86,400 standard seconds (see SI for the current definition of the standard second) in a standard day, but in the French decimal time system there are 100,000 decimal seconds in the day, so the decimal second is shorter than its counterpart.
Decimal unit Seconds Minutes Hours h:mm:ss
Decimal second 0.864 0.0144 0.00024 0:00:00.9
Decimal minute 86.4 1.44 0.024 0:01:26.4
Decimal hour 8,640 144 2.4 2:24:00.0

D: Joseph Campbell, my spiritual guru, pointed out the mystical significance of the old time system #s.

In Joseph Campbell's, The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space, he writes about the similarity between the Babylonian and Genesis flood stories. In the Babylonian or Sumerian story, there were ten kings who lived very long lives from creation to the time of the flood. This is given as a total of 432,000 years.

In the Biblical account, there were ten patriarchs between Adam and Noah, who also lived long lives. Noah was 600 years old at the time of the landing of the Ark on the mountains of Ararat (in present day Turkey). The total years add up to 1,656.

In 1,656 years, there are 86,400 weeks, and half that number is 43,200. There are myths about cycles in time, and out of time, so this doubling/halving is not uncommon. He believed that someone carefully gave the age of Noah to secretly hide the time cycle number.

He points out a number of other strange things about the numbers. Viking eddas were found in Iceland that told the story of the Day of Ragnorook, the Doomsday of the Gods. At that time, 800 Divine Warriors will come out of each of the 540 Doors of Valhalla (800 x 540 = 432,000).

The number can be found in an internal clock in the body, as well as in the Cosmos. A trained athlete's heart beats one time each second. In a 24 hour day, that is 86,400 beats.

The earth's axis wobble that causes the precession of the equinoxes is given as 25,920 years. Divided by the ancient number called "soss," 60, which was used in calculations, results in 432.

A manufacturer of golf balls once did a test to find the ideal number of dimples to put on golf balls. It turned out that balls with 432 dimples went farther than the rest.

D: neat!

D: about that heart rate thing... not really.
Lance Armstrong rests at 32 beats per minute.
Mine was so low after 2 cups of coffee that my partner in CPR class thought there was something wrong with me. 60-80 is normal and mine was 50 at that point!
I joke we need 'decimal seconds' to reflect our heart beats on our coffee.