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

Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw at users.sf.net
Wed Feb 11 14:22:41 UTC 2004


On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 10:12:40PM +0800, Ruimu wrote:
> > >>>>> "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.

Don't confuse the Chinese language with the Chinese writing system.
The former is just another language - no more and no less logical than Polish,
Latin or Swahili. It's only the writing system that's any special.
If you used Han characters for any other language, you'd be no less "logical"
than with Chinese.



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