Let me give an example.

Take the words:

drop, puddle, pond, lake, river, sea, ocean.

These objects are all water and only differ in quantity not in quality. Then why to remember so many words ? These seven words can be replaced a new words with a common root word ( such as 'wassa' taken from german) and adding an indicator of quantity.

To indicate gradient of quantity/scale, vowel suffices can be used.

Lowest to highest gradient : a, e, i, o, u, ou, etc... or simply digits can be used. 1, 2, 3 ,4 etc.

They become

drop = wassa;

puddle = wasse;

pond = wassi;

lake = wasso;

river = wassu;

Now it is lot easier to remember.

Or we could make it Wassa1, wassa2, wassa3 ..etc. But I prefer earlier one.

Another example of words would be :

crawl, walk, run etc.

or

infant, baby, teenager, man/woman, elder etc.

In a nutshell, when forming a new language, rather than inhereting words from other language as they are, artificially create words that are easier to pronounce, and easy to remember.

Compare remembering drop, puddle, pond, lake, river, sea, ocean against remembering wassa, wasse, wassi, wasso, wassu! .. It is extremly easy.

Similary rain, bristle, steam, flood, are related to water. They also can be dervied from root word "wassa", not by using same quantity gradient but along some other dimention such as density gradient/dimention.

Thus ice, snow, steam, rain, bristle may be formed along density dimention of root word "wassa".

I think Espranto critically lacks this feature.

With this technique we can create vocabulary of common words that can be memorized within 1 hour. Very useful for true globalization!
-- VJW, Jan 20 2012

International language by stealth http://web.archive....0stealth#1081045277
Back when i shared an account (sorry). [nineteenthly, Jan 21 2012]

Ars Signorum http://books.google...iO4HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1
George Dalgarno, 1661 [pocmloc, Jan 23 2012]

The Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects http://www.verysmallobjects.com/
in a similar vein... [prufrax, Jan 26 2012]

I'll grant pond and lake differ only in size. Likewise creek(crick), stream, brook, river, etc. But a drop (falling water), puddle (accumulated water with no in and out flow), lake (accumulated water with in and out flow, surrounded by land and fresh), river (flowing water) are all different.

Even sea (large body of salt water, with inflow, largely surrounded by land) and ocean (large body of salt water with inflow and no outflow, only partially surrounded by land) have slightly different meanings not related to size, although that one I'll allow is somewhat arbitrary.
-- MechE, Jan 20 2012


nice if everything were linear. but it ain't.

//crawl, walk, run etc.//
jog, canter, sidle, skip, hop, moonwalk, sprint, gallop, pace, bound, perambulate, dance, prance, stroll...
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 20 2012


Agreed. Objects listed are not exactly same in quality. However I think benefits outweigh costs in terms of remembering all the words for a new learner. For a novice just remembering a root word is sufficient to intutively guess what a new word might mean.
-- VJW, Jan 20 2012


[+]
//digits can be used// numbers could be the vowel sounds by themselves... it'd reinforce the other usage as well.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 20 2012


Brillianta.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 20 2012


//numbers could be the vowel sounds by themselves..// Thats a good idea.!

With concepts like these, it should be possible to design a language that any one can learn in 1 hour.
-- VJW, Jan 20 2012


Willl this language include Textperanto?
-- xandram, Jan 20 2012


//Willl this language include Textperanto?//

I think it will branch out eventually.
-- VJW, Jan 20 2012


The thing is, what proportion of your vocabulary could you simplify by using this method?

More specifically, are there any words in this annotation which would be addressed by such a system?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 20 2012


This is nowhere near good enough in the same way the first airplane was nowhere near good enough. This could take flight!

Particularly I expect highly advanced civilisations that travel through space and make contact with other species would have something like this. So if we follow mathematical rules, this new language would be similar to theirs and we could make communication much easier in a future/science fiction type scenario.

+
-- zeno, Jan 20 2012


//The thing is, what proportion of your vocabulary could you simplify by using this method? More specifically, are there any words in this annotation which would be addressed by such a system?//

"The thing is" - part of the "importance" series
"proportion" - standalone
"vocabulary" - standalone (though arguably a related element of "letter, word, phrase, sentence, etc"
"simplify" - compression/decompression
"method" - standalone, though arguably part of "hint, like, method, facsimile, reality"
"more specifically" - sortof speaks for itself dunnit.
"words" - obvious part of "letter, word, phrase..." and the context in this case is actually the series itself, not just "words".
"annotation" - "placement of a note in a text document"
"addressed" - sliding scale of "directness" perhaps
"system" - see "method".

The above is obviously an oversimplification, and illustrates the need for further linear notation concerning, at the very least, "ownership" of some kind.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 21 2012


All your wordage are belong to us.
-- Alterother, Jan 21 2012


Esperanto has -et- and -eg-, and zero for the degree between the two, and is very badly designed, but in this case i think a neutral degree could go unmarked and the two degrees above and below it could be marked, maybe by prefixes like the SI ones. Hence you could have lago - lake, lagego - inland sea, megalagego - ocean, lageto - pond, mikrolageto - puddle.

However, "drop" and "river" belong in a different list, for instance: droplet, drop, splash (noun), bucketful - probably not very good examples. For "river", the sequence is something like trickle, burn, stream, tributary, river, estuary. I feel that a burn is not a stream but i'm not sure which way round they are and tributary may not belong there.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 21 2012


I just realized, : It is partially baked in metric system.

Root word : gram, meter etc.

Quantity gradient : mili, centi, deca ...mega, tera etc.

So we have megameter, Kilometer, centimemter, micrometer etc.

However these gradients are a bit cryptic/machineistic to be used as a part of language.
-- VJW, Jan 21 2012


[nineteenthly,], I think we can not be purist in this scheme. If new learners can intuitively guess the meaning of a word with sufficient accuracy, that should be sufficient.
-- VJW, Jan 21 2012


A funny example would be forming names of colors, although it is not in exactly in realm of this scheame.

Color names can be formed as a composition of R,G, B value (Red, Green, Blue). For example,

Lets say, a = 0 i.e. min, e = 1, i = 2, o = 3 u = 4 (max.)

Thus,

black would be ( r = 0, g = 0, b = 0)

"RaGaBa".

White would be r = max, g = max, b = max;

i.e. "RuGuBu". or Rugubu.

Red would be R = max, G = 0, B = 0

i.e. RuGaBa.

A grey would be R = medium, B = medium, G = medium.

So it would be "RiGiBi"

Although, I must admit it sounds funny, but people may get used to it over time.
-- VJW, Jan 21 2012


Yes, it is sort of baked in the metric system, which leads me to my truly ancient idea to which i will attempt to link. The reason i suggested putting nothing in the middle is that it reduces the need to learn something and shortens the length of words.

On colours: There's a classic work on implicational universals in colour terms called 'Basic Color Terms' i think, and along with Wittgenstein's 'Remarks On Colour' indicates that an RGB colour space, or any other, is not enough, though it would be OK for many purposes. A black square can look white depending on its surroundings, for example, and brown is not a real colour. There would also be a problem between pale luminosity, ash-colour and silver.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 21 2012


//If new learners can intuitively guess the meaning of a word with sufficient accuracy, that should be sufficient.//

But then language teachers would make less money...
-- not_morrison_rm, Jan 21 2012


//The reason i suggested putting nothing in the middle is that it reduces the need to learn something and shortens the length of words//

I too was thinking along same lines.

// A black square can look white depending on its surroundings, for example, //

Can you give examples ?

//and brown is not a real colour//

You mean it is not a primary color, but a combination of primary colors ? .. That does not stop us from replacing the name "brown" by its new suggested scheme, if we wish to do so.
-- VJW, Jan 21 2012


// Can you give examples ? // Yes. In dim light, a white square might be just as dark as a black square in bright light - measuring the light reflected by a photometer could show it was emitting a similar number of photons at the same wavelengths, but one would be black and the other white. Something similar could happen on a TV or monitor, for instance, a CRT turned off might look greenish-brown but an unilluminated part of the screen when it's on would be interpreted as black.

Brown, grey and other colours are mixtures, but also other things are going on with them. For instance, grey is only luminous if an unsaturated light is passing through it, and even then it's more like white. Brown is similarly a colour which can't be luminous unless one interprets what one is looking at as reflective. These are Wittgenstein's examples, and he gives others, some of which i disagree with.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 21 2012


Would a brown book be less luminous than a blue book?
-- mouseposture, Jan 21 2012


// are there any words in this annotation which would be addressed by such a system?//

IMO, right approach would be make groups of all the synonyms. Then start with root word and add suffices.

e.g. village, town, district, city, metropolis

Above could be one of such groups.
-- VJW, Jan 22 2012


This idea surely isn't going to make song lyrics and poetry any more interesting.
-- jurist, Jan 22 2012


//This idea surely isn't going to make song lyrics and poetry any more interesting//

Yes, Thats one possibility that needs to be worked out. There will be more repetativeness in words. But chances that repeatative words will come into same sentences will vary from sentance to sentance.

On the other hand it might make poetry more interesting because it may be easier to make words rhyme.
-- VJW, Jan 22 2012


Totally baked and published already, exactly as described in this idea, in 1661. <link>
-- pocmloc, Jan 23 2012


[Zeno] Yes. I too think so. Such scheams will have to be formulated for communicating with aliens since such scheams take advantage of mathematics and logic. More complex scheams can be formualted such as the colors naming scheams give above.

//exactly as described in this idea, in 1661. // It does not look like english.
-- VJW, Jan 25 2012


Assuming that most common objects can be sufficiently represented as an 8x8 icon, all that's needed is a repertoire of 256 phonemes which can be strung together into 8-phoneme words.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 27 2012


I'm sure you're i ching to explain how little blocks of binary could possibly convey information.
-- spidermother, Jan 27 2012


A suffusion of yellow.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 27 2012



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