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Warning! Very, very long post....
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Has anyone consider that the Speech might be like in The Golden Compass??? One word/symbol could have a thousand meanings but it's all about the "Ladder" and intention? (such as do you play it staccato, legato, with a lot of vibrato or what in music)
About mathimaticalness of the Speech:
Does anyone else remember the passage in Book 1 where Nita is checking the symbols to make sure the wizardry is "balanced:? It said all the symbols had mathimatical numbers attached to them. Also the form of spells are like chemical equations. Everything must be balanced. (Which makes me think of Taoism... again with the China :-) )
Also on the computer note: 1 byte of data (8 bits or 1s or 0s) couldn't possibly be used to display the speech. (as it is done with english) That will only give you 256 possible combinations. DD said there are 418 symbols/combinations. So instead of Ascii (the 256 symbols used to display the alphanumerical system I'm typing in) which uses 1 byte per symbol, perhaps the computers that can work with The Speech use 2 bytes to contain data. This will give you well beyond the nessisary 418. In fact it will give you somewhere around 65,536 possible combinations. So what could the extra couple thousand be used for? or do you think they just let it go to waste? Perhaps it describes intention... and really, there are 418 symbols but there could be accents, and ten-ten etc. (like japanese). This would give you enough space to describe the extra data apparently associated with the symbols.
But why 418??? why not 256 or 1024 or 640 or 3431734103284713290874102348172??? (that was just some random number)
There is a reference, not to creating symbols, but to wizard short hand in Book 4 and I think some of the later ones. (Sorry, my memories of `em are a couple months old since the last time I re-read the series. [I've read it maybe 3 times... ok, that's not an impressive number... but it's quality not quantity!] so I can't give you a page number.) I think it is around the part where they are going to make the timeslide spell, and they need their names... I don't know there may also be a reference to creating new ones...
I don't know if anyone else has attempted it, but I have actually considered trying to build a full out model of a language used for similiar purpose as the Speech. (No not magic: Description.) Think about it. There is no such thing as preciseness in language. Without "wiggle room" much of the poetic-ness is lost. This idea strays from the topic a bit, but has anyone ever considered that the "ladder" method could be used by apply an extra symbol or two to words to give it some "backup"? Conside in Japanese the word play of Kaeru. it means "to return [home]" and it also means "frog". In english, as mentioned earlier, Sun and Son. I recall from reading "The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee" (translation by... forget who, Google should know!) and there is a word play in the story on "turnup" and "turnip". What shocked me was how few people realized the odds of those words having similar sounds in Chinese. In fact, they don't. The translator changed them from something like "Green Vegitables"/"Chestnuts" (memory may be failing me, but it was something like that.). (This bugged me to no end until I found what it really was in the translation notes in the back of the book... heh... yeah, as my name suggests, I obsess over seemingly pointless things.) Anyway, this got me thinking, and here's what I came up with: You have a basic word such as "shape" then what you do is you add some modifiers to it "shape" becomes "shape; sides=4" or some such. Next, what happens is you add a second "ladder" meaning, example "stand" and modify that further "stand;parts=4" and so on, you could add as many layers as desired. another piece of information added such as "material=glass" (obviously you can break "glass" down into a further description. I'm assuming you have made a short hand version of it.) so, here's what my example yeilds:
"shape;sides=4;material=glass"
"stand;parts=4"
anyone want to hazard a guess as to what I'm describing? If you guessed "elbaT" (spelled backwards so it doesn't give it away until you are ready to read it.) then you'd be right. But more importantly, I am describing a GLASS table with 4 corners and 4 legs, yes? a square table. Much more descriptive than if I had said "a table" yes? the problem with such a hypothetical language is that, you can break EVERYTHING down into theoretically smaller parts. I mean, "materials" can become "Items; use=join;definition=(standard)specific" and you can add any level of complexity... The problem with this though, is that it can be ambiguous! Glass object with 4 sides and for "stand"ing parts, could refer to a statue (though not very many would answer the description...) or some other object. Another problem is, where do you draw the line? Do you describe things down to the sub-atomic level? further? (if it was possible...) That would not be practical. Does the Book of Night With Moon contain the possitioning and interactions between every atom of the universe? If it does, how could ANYONE read it (and get anywhere with it)? Obviously, after a certain point, you would not describe things any further.
Anxious to hear your thoughts on this,
Chris
(yes this is my first post. Thought I might as well make it thoughtful. =D)
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Has anyone consider that the Speech might be like in The Golden Compass??? One word/symbol could have a thousand meanings but it's all about the "Ladder" and intention? (such as do you play it staccato, legato, with a lot of vibrato or what in music)
About mathimaticalness of the Speech:
Does anyone else remember the passage in Book 1 where Nita is checking the symbols to make sure the wizardry is "balanced:? It said all the symbols had mathimatical numbers attached to them. Also the form of spells are like chemical equations. Everything must be balanced. (Which makes me think of Taoism... again with the China :-) )
Also on the computer note: 1 byte of data (8 bits or 1s or 0s) couldn't possibly be used to display the speech. (as it is done with english) That will only give you 256 possible combinations. DD said there are 418 symbols/combinations. So instead of Ascii (the 256 symbols used to display the alphanumerical system I'm typing in) which uses 1 byte per symbol, perhaps the computers that can work with The Speech use 2 bytes to contain data. This will give you well beyond the nessisary 418. In fact it will give you somewhere around 65,536 possible combinations. So what could the extra couple thousand be used for? or do you think they just let it go to waste? Perhaps it describes intention... and really, there are 418 symbols but there could be accents, and ten-ten etc. (like japanese). This would give you enough space to describe the extra data apparently associated with the symbols.
But why 418??? why not 256 or 1024 or 640 or 3431734103284713290874102348172??? (that was just some random number)
There is a reference, not to creating symbols, but to wizard short hand in Book 4 and I think some of the later ones. (Sorry, my memories of `em are a couple months old since the last time I re-read the series. [I've read it maybe 3 times... ok, that's not an impressive number... but it's quality not quantity!] so I can't give you a page number.) I think it is around the part where they are going to make the timeslide spell, and they need their names... I don't know there may also be a reference to creating new ones...
I don't know if anyone else has attempted it, but I have actually considered trying to build a full out model of a language used for similiar purpose as the Speech. (No not magic: Description.) Think about it. There is no such thing as preciseness in language. Without "wiggle room" much of the poetic-ness is lost. This idea strays from the topic a bit, but has anyone ever considered that the "ladder" method could be used by apply an extra symbol or two to words to give it some "backup"? Conside in Japanese the word play of Kaeru. it means "to return [home]" and it also means "frog". In english, as mentioned earlier, Sun and Son. I recall from reading "The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee" (translation by... forget who, Google should know!) and there is a word play in the story on "turnup" and "turnip". What shocked me was how few people realized the odds of those words having similar sounds in Chinese. In fact, they don't. The translator changed them from something like "Green Vegitables"/"Chestnuts" (memory may be failing me, but it was something like that.). (This bugged me to no end until I found what it really was in the translation notes in the back of the book... heh... yeah, as my name suggests, I obsess over seemingly pointless things.) Anyway, this got me thinking, and here's what I came up with: You have a basic word such as "shape" then what you do is you add some modifiers to it "shape" becomes "shape; sides=4" or some such. Next, what happens is you add a second "ladder" meaning, example "stand" and modify that further "stand;parts=4" and so on, you could add as many layers as desired. another piece of information added such as "material=glass" (obviously you can break "glass" down into a further description. I'm assuming you have made a short hand version of it.) so, here's what my example yeilds:
"shape;sides=4;material=glass"
"stand;parts=4"
anyone want to hazard a guess as to what I'm describing? If you guessed "elbaT" (spelled backwards so it doesn't give it away until you are ready to read it.) then you'd be right. But more importantly, I am describing a GLASS table with 4 corners and 4 legs, yes? a square table. Much more descriptive than if I had said "a table" yes? the problem with such a hypothetical language is that, you can break EVERYTHING down into theoretically smaller parts. I mean, "materials" can become "Items; use=join;definition=(standard)specific" and you can add any level of complexity... The problem with this though, is that it can be ambiguous! Glass object with 4 sides and for "stand"ing parts, could refer to a statue (though not very many would answer the description...) or some other object. Another problem is, where do you draw the line? Do you describe things down to the sub-atomic level? further? (if it was possible...) That would not be practical. Does the Book of Night With Moon contain the possitioning and interactions between every atom of the universe? If it does, how could ANYONE read it (and get anywhere with it)? Obviously, after a certain point, you would not describe things any further.
Anxious to hear your thoughts on this,
Chris
(yes this is my first post. Thought I might as well make it thoughtful. =D)
And Welcome! 
Anyways, dai!
<span class="ev_code_BLUE">Hi!</span>
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