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Sorry about that. Just noticed that I misread your comment. It took me a while to realize that you wrote WYSIWYM to mean "what you see is what you mean". I don

Sorry about that. Just noticed that I misread your comment. It took me a while to realize that you wrote WYSIWYM to mean "what you see is what you mean". I don't get the appeal of logographic scripts though. I personally think an alphabet with strict pronunciation rules is the way to go. It's easy to learn and more predictable. And psychologically speaking it doesn't even matter all that much whether meaning is contained in words or characters. We read scripts by meaning anyways. In reading English for example, we read words, not characters. "It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

perl4ever 6y ago
Most of those words are short though, which means the displacement of a letter from its expected location is not very large. And if you combined typical spelling errors with the scrambled order, it might be too much to parse. I think it's going to far to suggest letter order has no useful information.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  I just copied and pasted an example, I didn't write it myself. It's true that order of letters do matter more as words get longer. The point is that we don't really read letters. We read words. So I would even argue that written English is basically like Chinese since in both cases you have to recognize the word/character and memorize its pronunciation and meaning. In both scripts you get hints of pronunciation, but in both cases you kind of have to do a lot of memorizing. In the case of English it's because it has no consistent rules or predictability. But then the words aren't really logographic, so I guess we're stuck with the worst of both worlds. No meaning, and very unreliable pronunciation hints.
strogonoff 6y ago
The example I usually come up with is like “bad” and “bed” in English. Two basic units with entirely orthogonal meanings, but difference in written representation is minimal and “a” vs. “e” do not have a semantic component (e.g., “a” doesn’t mean “bad”, and “e” doesn’t mean “rest”). To be clear, it does happen in, say, Chinese too, especially with complex characters that have a phonetic component. That’s why it could be an interesting experiment to design a written system that is “pure” in such a way that increasing distance in meaning always results in increasing difference in written representation. (And considering that most languages with logographic writing tend to be analytic, what if this language was actually very synthetic?) > I don't get the appeal of logographic scripts though. I personally think an alphabet with strict pronunciation rules is the way to go. It's easy to learn and more predictable. I think it’s subjective. With Hangul as an example, to me it was indeed easy to “learn” the writing, but is much harder to actually comprehend and generally use Korean language.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  > I think it’s subjective. With Hangul as an example, to me it was indeed easy to “learn” the writing, but is much harder to actually comprehend and generally use Korean language. You're right, but that doesn't really explain why you want logographic writing. The script can be independent of the spoken language. Latin is used in various languages, and even Hangul isn't exclusively used by Korean. I think the point you made is not really relevant.
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    > You're right, but that doesn't really explain why you want logographic writing. I thought radically novel approaches to language were underrepresented in invented languages, and gave an example of something I [subjectively] consider to be an obviously interesting area for exploration. (1) I think a language in which written forms of units differ appropriately to the distance in their meaning could be pretty cool, and (2) a fully phonetic system would thus not be unfeasible, as it would require pronunciation to always differ proportionately to semantics, which—since we are physically limited in the variety of sounds we can produce—could mean very long written forms. That leaves logography of some kind. (I added “synthetic” as an additional challenge—logographic systems seem to be used by mostly analytic languages, so what if the opposite is attempted?) As it turned out thanks to elsewhere in the thread, there do in fact exist constructed languages that address some of those points, although they are not very popular (and don’t tend to come up on HN) compared to Esperanto or Toki Pona.

perl4ever 6y ago

Most of those words are short though, which means the displacement of a letter from its expected location is not very large. And if you combined typical spelling errors with the scrambled order, it might be too much to parse. I think it's going to far to suggest letter order has no useful information.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
I just copied and pasted an example, I didn't write it myself. It's true that order of letters do matter more as words get longer. The point is that we don't really read letters. We read words. So I would even argue that written English is basically like Chinese since in both cases you have to recognize the word/character and memorize its pronunciation and meaning. In both scripts you get hints of pronunciation, but in both cases you kind of have to do a lot of memorizing. In the case of English it's because it has no consistent rules or predictability. But then the words aren't really logographic, so I guess we're stuck with the worst of both worlds. No meaning, and very unreliable pronunciation hints.

strogonoff 6y ago

The example I usually come up with is like “bad” and “bed” in English. Two basic units with entirely orthogonal meanings, but difference in written representation is minimal and “a” vs. “e” do not have a semantic component (e.g., “a” doesn’t mean “bad”, and “e” doesn’t mean “rest”). To be clear, it does happen in, say, Chinese too, especially with complex characters that have a phonetic component. That’s why it could be an interesting experiment to design a written system that is “pure” in such a way that increasing distance in meaning always results in increasing difference in written representation. (And considering that most languages with logographic writing tend to be analytic, what if this language was actually very synthetic?) > I don't get the appeal of logographic scripts though. I personally think an alphabet with strict pronunciation rules is the way to go. It's easy to learn and more predictable. I think it’s subjective. With Hangul as an example, to me it was indeed easy to “learn” the writing, but is much harder to actually comprehend and generally use Korean language.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
> I think it’s subjective. With Hangul as an example, to me it was indeed easy to “learn” the writing, but is much harder to actually comprehend and generally use Korean language. You're right, but that doesn't really explain why you want logographic writing. The script can be independent of the spoken language. Latin is used in various languages, and even Hangul isn't exclusively used by Korean. I think the point you made is not really relevant.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  > You're right, but that doesn't really explain why you want logographic writing. I thought radically novel approaches to language were underrepresented in invented languages, and gave an example of something I [subjectively] consider to be an obviously interesting area for exploration. (1) I think a language in which written forms of units differ appropriately to the distance in their meaning could be pretty cool, and (2) a fully phonetic system would thus not be unfeasible, as it would require pronunciation to always differ proportionately to semantics, which—since we are physically limited in the variety of sounds we can produce—could mean very long written forms. That leaves logography of some kind. (I added “synthetic” as an additional challenge—logographic systems seem to be used by mostly analytic languages, so what if the opposite is attempted?) As it turned out thanks to elsewhere in the thread, there do in fact exist constructed languages that address some of those points, although they are not very popular (and don’t tend to come up on HN) compared to Esperanto or Toki Pona.