Written Speech

[semiramis]

Chinese, however, is only typeable (sp? is that even a word?) with a special program (you type the non-accented ping-ying, and then choose the appropriate character from a list it gives you; this presents problems sometimes involving alternate ping-yings); otherwise, you need an online resource to copypaste everything from.

Originally posted by Wilf:
On a side note on hiroglyphics: it almost certainly started otu as picture-per-word. However, fairly soon they started using the picture to represent the sound of the object. Example (in Enlglish): Using a piccy of the sun for the sound "sun", and then using the piccy of the sun for tee words "sun" and also "son".

theoretically, all languages started out as pictotgrams.

Interesting thing about the different kinds of writing systems--most alphabets (as in "individual sound" systems, not "syllable" ones, which are called syllablries) are derived/stolen from that of one culture... I think it was the Phoenecians...(someone correct me if I'm wrong...). Elsewhere, they all have syllablries, or ideograms.

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by kli6:
Remember that we don't know the number of symbols--only the number of keys on a keyboard to enter the symbols. And not all languages use keyboards the same way.

Now, how to put this tactfully? Hmm. Wrong, and uhh, wrong.
From SYWTBAW, when Nita's just starting to learn the Speech: There was a syllabary and pronunciation guide for the 418 symbols used in the wizardly Speech to describe relationships and effects that other human languages had no specific words for.
In Dilemma, Dairine didn't reconfigure the keyboard to have 418 keys. ... the keys shimmered and reconfigured themselves to display the 418 characters of the Speech.
With eight shift states, you could do that with only 53 keys.
I'm being a bit nitpicky today - sorry.

[Rysade]

Deep Thoughts:

I was wondering about the Binary form of the Speech. Now, binary is simply numbers in binary format, and someone assigned some numbers in binary for the roman alphabet, ASCII. ASCII starts at 54 or something and goes to like, 150. That just covers the letters, I think. Lowercase and caps. Anyway, the Speech wouldn't use ASCII, it would use something more in line with the actual origins of the language itself. Considering binary is completely mathematical in origins, then the Speech's characters would have to have numerical assignments to them. Should I assume that the 418 characters of the speech each have a prime number assigned to them, thus enabling any text written in them to be translated into a mathematical statement, and thereby into binary? Or perhaps some of them have numerical values, and others have logical meanings, such as AND, OR NOT and IF, THEN, ELSE?

Hmm. I'm not making much progress on my original point here. Hum. A computer can only be made to understand something if it is told it mathematically. The Speech can communicate with anything. Therefore, the speech is a mathematical language.* What I'm wondering is, does the speech use two characters to communicate with computers, or does it use the two characters the computers already have to form numbers which correspond to their component Speech characters? I have been assuming that it is the latter, that computers use 1's and 0's to form a number that means 'changeable.' But if the speech is a mathematical language, then I'm wondering why researchers/mathematicians/scientists wouldn't have discovered that certain numbers have meanings outside of math (such as social meanings, or a specific number ubiquitously meaning 'changeable' to all creatures and people). Numerology makes claims in that respect, having numbers for people up to 9, or somthing. I think that each character would have a corresponding Prime number. That would make it possible for them to be combined to create close to any number when multiplied, and certainly every number when added. The problem is, What's the character for 0, 1, and 2? Do these numbers have meanings that are known by all living beings? Hmm, perhaps they do. I certainly know the difference between them, and Life operates according to games that are often played with 0, 1 and 2 players. The Meaning of those characters would probably be so broad that they would seem meaningless at first glance.



*of course, not only a mathematical language, but a social one too.

[semiramis]

but wouldn't 0, 1, 2 technically be a trinary counting system? I thought that binary only uses two characters: 0 and one. Which is why it goes 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 etc. etc. etc.... right? *i might be wrong here...*

You know what would be cool? A hexidecimal counting system in the Speech...

Although there are numbers that have a specific significance... phi, for an example, or pi, or e, or sqrt2 or 0, or infinity.... phi especially, because it's such ubiquitous proportion in nature... actually, most of the significant numbers seem to be proportions... oh, and two, because of ppls tendancy to think in twos (as well as nature's tendancy to work in twos, or opposites, or compliments)... and... and... hummm..... there are certain number patterns, too (pascal's triangle comes to mind, as does fibbonaci's (sp?) counting system) that seem to apply to a lot of things...

I think, actually, numbers, and mathematics in general, are a very special thing in communication, and therefore in Speech as well... mathematics is a purely "symbolic" (haha.... I nearly typo'd that "sumbolic"...) system, a concept built purely upon abstract foundations, and many people argue that the realization of this, and other such "abstractions" (e.g., art, expressive language, etc., etc.), was the catalyst to the evolution of intellegent life...

[Peter Murray]

Oh dear, I'm back again.
In Wizard's Dilemma, p277 of the paperback:
see the GO/NO GO toggle down at the end? If that one tiny little knot won't knot, you might as well give up and go home.
I've drawn that as half of a wizard's knot, with a second version that hasn't been tied.

1) Wizard's knot, 2) unchanging/changeable, 3) seer (with stand alone version), 4) connection, 5) Go/No go.

Am I getting carried away, or what?

Originally posted by Diane Duane:
I'm not saying I wouldn't develop the alphabet, as an exercise in creative calligraphy. But I will not name the characters, or go any further.

I wonder what the chances are that the Errantry Concordance will include the results of such an exercise? That'd be nicely definitive.

Afterthought: Can you see this picture? It shows up in one of my browsers, but not another one. The URL is right, I copied it to the other browser. The picture is at http://www.table76.demon.co.uk/fanfic/Speech3.gif anyway.

[Rysade]

Perhaps I should rephrase that? The numbers 0, 1, and 10 have/don't have significance.

Trinary would be numbered 0, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, etc.

Sheesh, please excuse me if Digital is my primary numbering system! Just kidding, semi.

Don't forget sin, cos, tan, cot, etc.

"a concept built purely upon abstract foundations, and many people argue that the realization of this, and other such "abstractions" (e.g., art, expressive language, etc., etc.), was the catalyst to the evolution of intellegent life... "

Hmm. Hard to say. I'll refer back to Kevin Kelly on this. The man is useful in so many ways. In Out Of Control, he's talking about how people build artificial worlds, or simulacra, out of some internal drive. I can say with reasonable certainty that animals do not do this. I would say that building such worlds allows us to predict. Much like foxes when they play with their kills, we are building artificial worlds and interacting with them in order to become more effective in this one. For example, we are all now sitting at computers, either reading or typing or downloading something. Whatever it is that we claim it is, i.e, talking with people, or listening, is wrong. We aren't actually talking or listening. However, we're comfortable with saying so, because we are comfortable with simulacra representing these actions. We really don't care if it's real or not. I can't say that a beetle would care if it's dirt was real dirt or not, but I know that beetles don't simulate dirt and find new ways to use it.

In conclusion, I'd say that 'play' is an attributed behavior of anything alive, but the complexity of the play is dependent on the complexity of the being. Math is really just play, or simulation for us. It has practical applications though. Perhaps it has the most practical application of anything short of language itself.

[semiramis]

Rysade, I'd like to first apologize right now that I keep contradicting you .....

...having said that...

but cos, sin, tan, sec, csc, cot are proportions that vary.... cos and sin can be any numbers such that |n|<1, tan and cot are all real numbers, and sec and csc can be any number such that |n|>1.... They are only constant given the angle.

...although that is part of why I stated sqrt2 in my list ^.^v.

Artificial worlds... that's an interesting concept... a step further from what I was suggesting, in that representation--or rather, concious representation--of something as something it's not--physical metaphor, if you will--is the foundation of "intellegent life"... that the act of representation of the real world in a model is possible. Language is, itself, a simulacrum, if you think about it... as is math, which many scientists insist is "the language of science."

[Nerine]

Now, how to put this tactfully? Hmm. Wrong, and uhh, wrong.
From SYWTBAW, when Nita's just starting to learn the Speech: There was a syllabary and pronunciation guide for the 418 symbols used in the wizardly Speech to describe relationships and effects that other human languages had no specific words for.

But this I always took to mean that these were a set of special characters, used for describing things that other languages can't. Surely the Speech transcends all other languages and includes all their components as well, so that it also has characters (different ones) for describing things that other languages can. For example, we can say in English, "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (to pick a very mundane example.) It's ludicrous to suggest you can't say this in the Speech, but the passage you quoted above seems to indicate that these 418 symbols are not used for this purpose (since it is an concept that can be expressed in English.) So the Speech must contain more than 418 characters (or the way the passage is worded is quite misleading.)

Besides, if these 418 characters are just for describing "relationships and effects", then surely there must be some other characters for nouns as well (otherwise what would you describe?)

Nerine

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by Nerine:

From SYWTBAW, when Nita's just starting to learn the Speech: There was a syllabary and pronunciation guide for the 418 symbols used in the wizardly Speech to describe relationships and effects that other human languages had no specific words for.

But this I always took to mean that these were a set of _special_ characters, used for describing things that other languages can't. ... the passage you quoted above seems to indicate that these 418 symbols are not used for this purpose (since it _is_ an concept that can be expressed in English.) So the Speech _must_ contain more than 418 characters (or the way the passage is worded is quite misleading.)

True, it's ambiguous, but the passage about the keyboard explicitly refers to the 418 symbols of the Speech, which supports the first bit I quoted.

Besides, if these 418 characters are just for describing "relationships and effects", then surely there must be some other characters for nouns as well (otherwise what would you _describe_?)

True. The first passage refers to a syllabary, suggesting that you can build any word by spelling out its syllables, in the same way that 76 (I think) characters of Japanese can spell out any Japanese word, even though most of those words have a symbol of their own.

The Speech is complicated, even without considering the Enactive Recension!

[Kathy Li]

...there's also the small factor to consider that Nita (or any Wizard) can apparently create a new symbol. And if the Speech incorporates non-Speech characters...

But that said, mea culpa. I have not the kind of velcro mind that the details stick to. Mine's more teflon-coated.

Rysade, I can't help being far more prosaic about the binary representation of Speech. I'd just assumed a Wizard was part of the Unicode project, and tucked Speech symbols into the "unused" space . Poor one-byte-limited ASCII is not the be-all end-all of character encoding.

[Birdhead]

This is full SPAM. But I wanted to mention I've been reading this topic and really enjoying it. Thanks.

Also, PMurray, I can see the pictures.

[PK]

Er, Kli? Where are you getting that Nita can create new symbols? I can't recall that bit.

I do think that the Speech can be written out using just those 418 symbols. I also think it's clear that this is not the only way to do it. The greeting, for example, can be transliterated into characters we're more familiar with. We see that all the time. Sounds, in their own way, are symbols in this sense; we know it's also possible to speak the Speech using motions (silent...) and light-patterns and for that matter straight-up biochemistry. (I don't just mean that neurons fire when you use language. Abroad refers to the ability to overhear each other's bodies.) I imagine that some species use scent. Or some language that involves the sense of balance.

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by kli6:
But that said, mea culpa. I have not the kind of velcro mind that the details stick to. Mine's more teflon-coated.

I just remember roughly where it said, and go back and look at the words. Tricky for people who've had to borrow the books, of course. It helps that I'd been looking through SYWTBAW for descriptions of Fred etc, and Dilemma because I'd read Alone for quotes and went backwards :-) .

Rysade, I can't help being far more prosaic about the binary representation of Speech. I'd just assumed a Wizard was part of the http://www.unicode.org/standard/principles.html project, and tucked Speech symbols into the "unused" space . Poor one-byte-limited ASCII is not the be-all end-all of character encoding.

Of course, unless we find out all 418 characters of the Speech, we can't submit it as a proposal to their committee, as has happened with Klingon, and Tolkien's Elven and Dwarvish symbols.

Tui: Yes, it looks as if the problem with not seeing pictures is with my browser, which isn't seeing all the images of avatars, or the smileys in the shoutbox.

[Kathy Li]

PK: when she changes the Lone Power's name. (Or am I misremembering that as well, and she changed the symbol into an already-existing one?)

PM: I'm sure that if we actually had Manuals, instead of a Manual masquerading as some kids' book called So You Want to Be a Wizard?, we could find the correct Unicode scheme on the 'net, via a wstp:// ("Wizardly Speech Transfer Protocol") site.

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by kli6:
PK: when she changes the Lone Power's name. (Or am I misremembering that as well, and she changed the symbol into an already-existing one?)

Nita... drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upwards, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen -- if, only if...
Which I suppose means there's another known symbol to add to my list...

PM: I'm sure that if we actually had Manuals, instead of a Manual masquerading as some kids' book called _So You Want to Be a Wizard?_, we could find the correct Unicode scheme on the 'net, via a wstp:// ("Wizardly Speech Transfer Protocol") site.

Oh, rats. We can't see it because we're non-wizards.