[Wikipedia-l] An idea. What do you think about this?

[Ruimu]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Evan Prodromou" <evan at wikitravel.org>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] An idea. What do you think about this?


> >>>>> "t" ==   <talthen at wp.pl> writes:
>
>     t> The idea is to create new language, based on most popular
>     t> languages from all over the world. This language would not be a
>     t> human language, but a language to store information.
>
> [[en:pasigraphy]]

    See also... Chinese language! Leibniz himself was hoping that Chinese
would be a perfect universal language. In fact, most Chinese characters
(around 80% I guess) are both phonograms and ideograms (one part gives an
idea of the sound, one part gives an idea of the meaning, and phonetic part
can be chosen according to the meaning) but the core and might of this
language still is its lack of grounding on phonetics. Therefore, Chinese
people from different provinces can communicate despite their strongly
different dialects... with the finger (writing characters in the air or on
the palm). Because of the phonetic "rift", languages grounded on phonetics
are less stable in time and space (for example, French written language is
very far from the spoken one and you often have to learn 1) how to write a
word, 2) how to prononce it).

    Chinese is not this perfectly logical language Leibniz was hoping for,
but it's remain one of the best candidates for deaf people, if one wish to
reach universality.