4 ms·

But I literally gave an example... "Queue" and "cue" which are homophones in English. Now imagine if there is a language reform where IPA replaces the current

But I literally gave an example... "Queue" and "cue" which are homophones in English. Now imagine if there is a language reform where IPA replaces the current writing system, and both words are replaced with /kjuː/ as the only written form. "/kjuː/ the crowd" can be either "Queue the crowd" or "Cue the crowd". We are aware these two words are distinct from each other, since we learned these two words in their written form already, and in certain situations we won't have any ambiguity as to which action needs to be taken. If the reform lasts long enough that a new generation of people grows up only learning "/kjuː/" and not "queue/cue", they won't be so sure about which action is to be taken in "/kjuː/ the people" when it is presented as an isolated phrase without context. Think of a hash table that resolves hash collisions via separate chaining. The collision is when words sound the same (have the same index). Abolishing the current writing system is like dumpking the bucket contents and only returning the index. It's not an immediate problem because we still know that the bucket used to contain chained entries ("cached" in our brain memories"). Those who have never accessed the hash table (e.g. younger generations receiving education after the change) won't know what was in there before. They just know the index but not that there used to be two different data entries stored at the same index. The downside of losing information should be evident.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mac01021 8y ago
So you're saying that, when conversing via speech, the problems created by ambiguities such as "I heard a wail and I saw a whale" or "The knight was black" are more tractable than the problems arising from "When I lie, I lie on a bed" or "British left waffles on Falklands" Is that right? I'm not so sure. Given that you can only hear but not see, I feel they're probably equally problematic when there is not sufficient context to resolve the ambiguity. The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. I don't think anything changes about oral communication. (But I'm happy to be refuted!)
- ssnistfajen 8y ago
  >The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. That would be a fundamental change for the language itself and I don't see why would it ever be necessary. A person who has never heard of the first two sentences you mentioned will not be able to understand the meaning until you provide a long explaination of which word is which ("more context"), or just write down the sentence itself. Which one is faster and more concise? I don't see how does "British left waffles on Falklands" involve any homophones at all. Ambiguity of homophones can be resolved via context, but that's not one-and-the-same as all "out of context" sentences. The beauty of the Chinese language is that it can be incredibly concise on paper despite having the same sentence sound like gibberish when read, which is not a problem as long as the current writing system still exists. The information density in East Asian languages are higher in general thanks to this.
  - mac01021 8y ago
    "British left waffles on Falklands" is a moderately famous, ambiguous, historical newspaper headline from the UK [0] If you have absolutely no context and know nothing about politics or human society, you'll probably take it to mean that the British went to the Falkland islands and then when they left the left behind some waffles. In actuality it meant that someone was waffling on a decision to be made regarding the Falklands ("waffling" means being indecisive) and that someone was "the British Left" (the liberal faction of parliament). [0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-haber/british-left-waffles-on-f_b_11803832.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-haber/british-left-w...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mac01021 8y ago

So you're saying that, when conversing via speech, the problems created by ambiguities such as "I heard a wail and I saw a whale" or "The knight was black" are more tractable than the problems arising from "When I lie, I lie on a bed" or "British left waffles on Falklands" Is that right? I'm not so sure. Given that you can only hear but not see, I feel they're probably equally problematic when there is not sufficient context to resolve the ambiguity. The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. I don't think anything changes about oral communication. (But I'm happy to be refuted!)

ssnistfajen 8y ago
>The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. That would be a fundamental change for the language itself and I don't see why would it ever be necessary. A person who has never heard of the first two sentences you mentioned will not be able to understand the meaning until you provide a long explaination of which word is which ("more context"), or just write down the sentence itself. Which one is faster and more concise? I don't see how does "British left waffles on Falklands" involve any homophones at all. Ambiguity of homophones can be resolved via context, but that's not one-and-the-same as all "out of context" sentences. The beauty of the Chinese language is that it can be incredibly concise on paper despite having the same sentence sound like gibberish when read, which is not a problem as long as the current writing system still exists. The information density in East Asian languages are higher in general thanks to this.
- mac01021 8y ago
  "British left waffles on Falklands" is a moderately famous, ambiguous, historical newspaper headline from the UK [0] If you have absolutely no context and know nothing about politics or human society, you'll probably take it to mean that the British went to the Falkland islands and then when they left the left behind some waffles. In actuality it meant that someone was waffling on a decision to be made regarding the Falklands ("waffling" means being indecisive) and that someone was "the British Left" (the liberal faction of parliament). [0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-haber/british-left-waffles-on-f_b_11803832.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-haber/british-left-w...