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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Pinyin or When to call "Game over, man!"
Message-ID: <CyHv48.LyC@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <Pine.ULT.3.91a.941028132128.13782A-100000@stein3.u.washington.edu>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 16:28:54 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <Pine.ULT.3.91a.941028132128.13782A-100000@stein3.u.washington.edu> Douglas Machle <dmachle@u.washington.edu> writes:
>With regard to powerful writing system independent of pronunciation:
>Perhaps the time has come to go about this systematically and re-examine
>John Wilkins' attempt at a universal language of signs (Real Character and
>Philosophical Language -- London: 1668).

The pasigraphy of John Wilkins is a language, not a writing system.
It comes with a pronunciation of its own.  It has nothing to do with
writing in any language other than PhLg.

>It was an attempt to reduce human language to a set of universal
>signs that could be read by anyone

It is not an attempt to do anything to human language; it is an
attempt to create a new human (?) language.  (The question mark
indicates my disbelief that a language with no redundancy would
be fit for human use.)

Anyway, if you want a pasigraphy, there are many better ones around,
such as Yukio Ota's Locos, a profile of which I read (with enormous
enthusiasm) in _Nauka i zhizn'_ 1976:10.  Has anyone else ever come
across it?

>-- somewhat like algebra is understood in English or French, etc.

I beg your pardon?

>If we could develop such a system, people all over the world could go
>on merrily speaking their own languages or dialects, and as long as
>they had the means to write, could communicate without much trouble.

Okay, let's try it.  Let everyone learn Lojban by 1 January 1995.

-- 
`That's yer oan problem, Judas', they telt him.  `It's nae concern tae us.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk/chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)  (The G-- G--)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
