About Tone and Tone Language

Maybe not even the western world, but the eastern world also have some problem to understand the usage of tone, but I am sure in the end, the International language will accept it. I had once talked to a Chinese linguist, it spent me ten days to explain it. This time, I spend one month to explain it for a western linguist, and he still don’t understand. Why it is so hard, I believe the key reason is that today linguist don’t care about math. Without the concept of math, it is hard to sense the difference between small difference and big gap.

My opponent asked me that both the tone and consonant cluster enable language have more signals to represent meanings, why you only emphasis on tone not consonant cluster?
I said the tone is living in every sound, you can’t separate it from any uttered voice, the only difference between tone and non-tone language is the former recognise tone as information carrier while the later don’t. It is like the ancient Phoenician language, they have vowel in their voice, but they don’t recognise it as information carrier. Or we may say, whenever a vowel changed in a Phoenician word, it still the same meaning. It is easy to understand our language has vowels, not because the writing symbols but because we extend our sensibility to detect the information in it. The key issue is extending sensibility. In the same way, after we extend our sensibility to tone we may get more information. And it just impossible that after a language extends its sensibility and its ability of   collecting information is equal to the old level. 

On the other hand, the consonant cluster is adding more consonants linearly. It needs more time to do it, while our target is using the same time to send the more message.

How Many Words Did Shakespeare Know?

Last century, many English linguists was proud of that English had more words than German and French. It is prove of that English was better than other language. But on the other hand, rarely some English linguists wanted to study how many English words, an English speaker could master. Only occasionally some paper revealed few data and the number was various from 250,000 to 150,000, from 70,000 to 30,000, from 10,000 to 20,000, anyway, no one could be trusted. Even the words number of Shakespeare was questionable. 

When I search ‘How many words did Shakespeare know’ from Google, I find a page:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2335721?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103185003707 it says that by a special calculation Shakespeare knew 31,534+35,000=66,534 words, compare a normal English speaker only master 10,000 to 20,000 words.

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564– 23 April 1616), yet when I check other documents, I find that the development of English dictionary is:

1658 ‘The New World of Words’ Edward Phillips, it had 17,000 words. (Shakespeare died 42 years)

1702 ‘A New English Dictionary’ by John Kerseyit had 28,000 words

1708 ‘Dictionarium Anglo－Britannicun’  by John Kersey it had 35,000 words

1730  ‘Dictionarium Britannicum’ by Nathan Baileyit had 48,000 words

1736 second edition of ‘Dictionarium Britannicum’ by Nathan Baileyit it had 60,000 words

The contradiction is that at Shakespeare’s time where were the 66,534 words? If Shakespeare really knew 66,534 words, the editor of the later dictionary didn’t need looking for other book, just collect Shakespeare’s work would find what the Nathan Baileyit found on 1736 that was 120 years after Shakespeare died.

The Key Reason of Chinese 1

Now let’s check, how many English words an English speaker has? Scientist found a 9 to 15 months baby might know its first word, 17 to 19 months they might learn 50 words. Later, it might get 8 words for every week. As their understanding developed when they were 6 years old, their vocabulary might be 2500-13000. It seemed, after this age, no one had ever studied carefully. So the numbers were quite different, someone said an educated person had to have 50,000 words; other said it could be 70,000 words, the maximum was 250,000 words. Now let’s check the number by math. Suppose a new born baby, from the first day, it learnt 10 words daily and never forgot them again.  During 365 days, it got 10x365=3650 words. When it was 10 years old, it got 36,500words. When it was 80 years old, it got 10x365x80=two hundred and ninety thousands words. Coincidently, it was the number that listed on last version of Oxford dictionary. Yet that dictionary only contained the word of literature, as for the scientific words, they said scientific words from appearing to disappearing was quick, before the dictionary was printed, the word might have gone. But the Webster Dictionary took scientific words, it was about 400,000 words. Today, the English could be two million words already. From history record, we know that Winston. Churchill was said to have 30,000 words, professor like Haldane was known as 50,000 to 60,000 words. At Shakespeare’ time, English only had 30,000 words, so scholars believed that Shakespeare only had 20,000 words. If the standard of educated person was 50,000 words, then both Churchill and Shakespeare were illiterate, at least semiliterate. Comparing with the Chinese educated person, they only learnt 3,000 characters that is enough. If they were smart as 6 years old knowing 2500-13,000 characters like above mentioned. Then they didn’t need to learn any words after this age. In the year 1988, China published a Chinese-English dictionary; they used 4,800 characters to match more than one hundred thousand English terms. And at the same time an English-Chinese dictionary using the same 4,800 characters to explain 1,480,000 English words.

The Key Reason of Chinese

The weak point of Chinese language is hard to learn. Even the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, said that it is too hard to learn. When a European heard this he/she was discouraged to know something about this language. I have to say, yes the writing system of this language is hard to learn. Even Chinese children have to spend four years to get them. But after these four years, they nearly don’t need learn more words. Instead, they put more energy to learn English. That is to say to learn Chinese is hard at beginning, then turned easy. But to learn English, at first it is easy, but later the huge vocabulary would be a big problem. My idea is a reform and let all characters turned to be pronouncing readable characters, even better than English words. It could be easy at beginning, then everybody can get the right pronouncing when read them if only they know the alphabetic letters. In this way, the reformed characters will allowed any English speaker learn Chinese in one year, and as they are the same thing of original characters, so by the help of computer, one key will shift them into original characters and one key will shift original characters into the reformed characters too.

As above said, why after four years’ learning a Chinese pupil don’t learn words anymore? The reason is that this language is a semantic language; a language that since Aristotle the European people dreamed for. In other word, they are self-explaining language. The normal example is there is no word [pork] but pig-meat, no [heifer] but young -female-ox, no [alto] but lowest-female-voice, no [plague] but mouse-disease etc.

Last century, Esperanto trying to do the same thing but they were not fully adopt this principle for instance they still keep the word [alto]. Besides the Esperanto lacking adequate species of sound, they had to double the size of pronunciation and it reduced the information intake during life span.

The Chinese characters enable the speaker enjoy a vocabulary of millions word while not reduce the information intake during life time. A Chinese speaker has only mastered 3,000 characters will be equal mastering millions words. For every Chinese word is formed by few characters, each character is in fact a basic word. Think about, by these 3,000 basic words, how many compound words we can create?  Suppose each compound word is made by two basic words, then 3,000 basic words can form 3,000x3,000=9,000,000 compound words. If each word is made by three basic words then 3,000 basic words can form 3,000x3,000x3,000=27,000,000,000 compound words. That is the trick of how they master 3,000 Characters is equal master millions words.

The Key Reason of Chinese 1

Now let’s check, how many English words an English speaker has? Scientist found a 9 to 15 months baby might know its first word, 17 to 19 months they might learn 50 words. Later, it might get 8 words for every week. As their understanding developed when they were 6 years old, their vocabulary might be 2500-13000. It seemed, after this age, no one had ever studied carefully. So the numbers were quite different, someone said an educated person had to have 50,000 words; other said it could be 70,000 words, the maximum was 250,000 words. Now let’s check the number by math. Suppose a new born baby, from the first day, it learnt 10 words daily and never forgot them again.  During 365 days, it got 10x365=3650 words. When it was 10 years old, it got 36,500words. When it was 80 years old, it got 10x365x80=two hundred and ninety thousands words. Coincidently, it was the number that listed on last version of Oxford dictionary. Yet that dictionary only contained the word of literature, as for the scientific words, they said scientific words from appearing to disappearing was quick, before the dictionary was printed, the word might have gone. But the Webster Dictionary took scientific words, it was about 400,000 words. Today, the English could be two million words already. From history record, we know that Winston. Churchill was said to have 30,000 words, professor like Haldane was known as 50,000 to 60,000 words. At Shakespeare’ time, English only had 30,000 words, so scholars believed that Shakespeare only had 20,000 words. If the standard of educated person was 50,000 words, then both Churchill and Shakespeare were illiterate, at least semiliterate. Comparing with the Chinese educated person, they only learnt 3,000 characters that is enough. If they were smart as 6 years old knowing 2500-13,000 characters like above mentioned. Then they didn’t need to learn any words after this age. In the year 1988, China published a Chinese-English dictionary; they used 4,800 characters to match more than one hundred thousand English terms. And at the same time an English-Chinese dictionary using the same 4,800 characters to explain 1,480,000 English words.

The Key Reason of Chinese

The weak point of Chinese language is hard to learn. Even the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, said that it is too hard to learn. When a European heard this he/she was discouraged to know something about this language. I have to say, yes the writing system of this language is hard to learn. Even Chinese children have to spend four years to get them. But after these four years, they nearly don’t need learn more words. Instead, they put more energy to learn English. That is to say to learn Chinese is hard at beginning, then turned easy. But to learn English, at first it is easy, but later the huge vocabulary would be a big problem. My idea is a reform and let all characters turned to be pronouncing readable characters, even better than English words. It could be easy at beginning, then everybody can get the right pronouncing when read them if only they know the alphabetic letters. In this way, the reformed characters will allowed any English speaker learn Chinese in one year, and as they are the same thing of original characters, so by the help of computer, one key will shift them into original characters and one key will shift original characters into the reformed characters too.

As above said, why after four years’ learning a Chinese pupil don’t learn words anymore? The reason is that this language is a semantic language; a language that since Aristotle the European people dreamed for. In other word, they are self-explaining language. The normal example is there is no word [pork] but pig-meat, no [heifer] but young -female-ox, no [alto] but lowest-female-voice, no [plague] but mouse-disease etc.

Last century, Esperanto trying to do the same thing but they were not fully adopt this principle for instance they still keep the word [alto]. Besides the Esperanto lacking adequate species of sound, they had to double the size of pronunciation and it reduced the information intake during life span.

The Chinese characters enable the speaker enjoy a vocabulary of millions word while not reduce the information intake during life time. A Chinese speaker has only mastered 3,000 characters will be equal mastering millions words. For every Chinese word is formed by few characters, each character is in fact a basic word. Think about, by these 3,000 basic words, how many compound words we can create?  Suppose each word is made by two basic words, then 3,000 basic words can form 3,000x3,000=9,000,000 compound words. If each word is made by three basic words then 3,000 basic words can form 3,000x3,000x3,000=27,000,000,000 compound words. That is the trick of how they master 3,000 Characters is equal master millions words.

The Reason of Chinese 1

Further example for Chinese is: slink is 早产羊 premature-sheep; springer is 孕羊 pregnant-sheep (ram would never pregnant so use sheep instead ewe. Besides the Chinese word for ewe is 母羊 female-sheep, using pregnant-sheep would save one character) ; yearling is一岁马one-year-horse; weanling is断奶马 stop-sucking-horse; juvenile is 两岁马 two-year-horse; maiden is 未赢马yet-win-horse; stud is 种马 seed-horse; bred is 本地马 native-horse; hinny is 驴骡donkey-mother- mule; mule马骡horse-mother- mule (in fact the character 骡is mule); equine is 马科 horse-family; charger is 战马war-horse.

Another funny thing is that the word ‘milk’. From dictionary, the original meaning is: an opaque white or bluish-white liquid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals, servingfor the nourishment of their young. But when we went to shopping center the milk only meant cow’s milk, when a sort of milk came from other animals such as ewe, mare, sow or jenny the meaning changed automatically. The linguist’s logic hasn’t dealt with this phenomenon yet but ‘convenient’ is the answer of people. The Chinese character 奶is always the same meaning as: an opaque white or bluish-white liquid ----.牛奶 is always cattle-milk (not cow-milk), even in shopping center. The breast milk is 人奶 human-milk. You may notice, the word cattle-milk is funny; but the Chinese regards that bull can’t offer milk, so they use the neutral word of cattle instead cow:

Some English questions translated into Chinese turned to be a joke. For instance: What animal caused the plague 鼠疫 (mouse-disease). What is lowest female voice? Answer: alto女低音 (female-lowest-voice):

Some English math book asked: what is the different between, pyramid四棱锥 (four- edges’-cone) and cone圆锥 (round-cone)

From the name of a certain disease Chinese one know which organ is wrong, but English one may not:

The Reason of Chinese

Yesterday, I told some number about the reason, now I’d like to talk some detail of language comparing. The following table will show it:

Words written in blue are Esperanto. You may see, for a Chinese, once they learnt the characters of left column (9 characters) and top row (9 characters), they would be able to create all rest words by themself. For instance the first one of left column is 猪 (pig) and the first one of the top row is 肉 (meat). Put them together is 猪肉 (pork). For English, they have to learn all the words that written in black; the blank box have to be compound words. For Esperanto, they have some property similar Chinese as ‘ajo’ for ‘meat’, ‘vir’ for male, ‘ino’ for female, ‘ido’ for ‘young’, but they have too many syllables to utter, not to speak of sounds.  In fact, once they add ‘ajo’, ‘vir’, ‘ino’, ‘ido’ on  a word, they add two syllables on it too. Besides this, they don’t give castrated animal either a prefix or a suffix.

Compound word is a good plan to reduce the burden of learning. Suppose very two basic words could form a compound word, then once you learnt 100 basic words, you could form 100x100=10,000 compound words by yourself. If every three words could form a compound word, then after you learnt 23 basic words, you could form 23x23x23=12167 compound words. The Chinese people normally learnt 3,000 characters. You might think each character was a basic word, then how many compound words could they know? Since every Chinese character only used a single sounds so that most Chinese compound words were shorter than English term, for instance ‘sodium alkyl benzene’ was the main ingredient of detergent, the Chinese word was 烷基苯磺酸钠 six sounds, while the English one was ten sounds.

In following table, we found the word of Esperanto even longer:

Remember each Chinese character is one sound. Then in the last box, the English ‘filly’ is two sounds, Chinese is three sounds, the Esperanto was five sounds, more than doubled the speaking time of English. Suppose, if we speak such a language, through the whole life, isn’t that means to say we only enjoy half the information than current English?       

Language Unification Reason vs. Power

Since no one has ever discussed about real reason, not even the so called rationalism, so, in the European history, now Europe encountered the dilemma of choosing language reason vs. power. In the history of Europe, the only change of language is from military power, either independent or imperialism. The European people don’t even think about that there could be other motivation of change language. Under this principle, the European think that if we wish stop the military intervention, then the best way is multilingualism.

But in China, there was at least three times that the aggressor adopted the language of their invasion subject.  Because it was the reason stronger than power.

The first time is happened in North Dynasty北魏（386-534）, at beginning they were a minority people and had their own language, but after they took over the north part of China, from the year 493 they took Chinese as their only public language. Then their 30,000,000 people added into the existed 24,000,000 speaking population at that time. The population of Chinese speaker turned to 54,000,000 at that time.

The second time is after Genghis Khan aggressed China, (1271) His grandson Kublai started to spread Chinese by the government power, but it was a short dynasty only survived 80 years. Before the members of the aristocracy became good in this language, they were driven out of the centre of politic. This time around 10 million population added to the already existed 100 million Chinese speaker. Yet the Mongolia people kept their life style very well besides speaking Chinese. For instance, the tradition of Chinese lived in big house, while the Mongolia lived in tent. So the emperor build big tents in the Chinese palace.

The third time is after Ming Dynasty, there came the Qing Dynasty (1644), it was a minority came from the north-east of China. Their name is Manchu, the original word of Mandarin, after they took over this country, they force the Chinese to accept their cultural. Their slogan for adulthood male was ‘Keep head, don’t keep hair. Keep hair, don’t keep head.’

From Confucius the Chinese keep a hair style like:

The Qing government force everybody changed as:

Otherwise, behead. But in the language issue, they adopt the Chinese. This time 2 million Manchu speaker added to the already existed 120 million Chinese speaker. After three hundred year of rule, they don’t even know their original language.

Furthermore, in the history, the Vietnam, Korean and Japan had learnt the Chinese Characters for their language that no one push them to do it.

The Unit of Sound [II]

As above units could not explain the reality of language, I defined the new unit of oral speech as ‘a simultaneously combined action of all vocal organs’, the abbreviation was SCAV. For example, (he, she, to, be, lang, teng, dan, ang, eng, an etc.) each of them was one syllable, and they were one SCAV too. In case (at, out, up, bit, fat, dot, beep, left, sprint) although they were one syllable, but they were not one SCAV, they had more than one SCAV. The funny thing was that ‘at’ was two SCAVs, while ‘ta’ was one SCAV, ‘up’ was two SCAVs, ‘pu’ was one SCAV.  Both ‘pig’ and ‘meat’ were two SCAVs; the ‘pork’ had two SCAVs too. Using (pork) instead (pig-meat) for a butcher, (who use this word two thousand times per day) will save two thousands SCAVs a day. The Chinese pig sounded like ‘zhu’ was one SCAV, meat ‘rou’ was still one SCAV, put them together ‘zhurou’ only two SCAVs, the same quantity of SCAV with ‘pork’. For this reason, Chinese language didn’t need a word ‘pork’ while their butcher didn’t need to utter extra two thousands SCAVs too. That is to say syllable≥SCAV. Some linguists had stated that ‘be’ longer than ‘bit’ in pronunciation. That is not truth. You may repeat each of them 20 times, see which one longer. Besides, the first inventor of alphabetic letters was ancient Phoenician; their letters had only consonants, no vowel. The Phoenician were good sailors, easy to understand, when they struggled with wild storm, they had to shout. So their words written by these consonants were quite loud and clear. Someone called them as syllabary. So, at the beginning both the two consonants, in [bit], [b] and [t] were loud and clear. Later people put vowel between consonants and pronounced them lighter deliberately, then we say there were some voiceless consonants.  In fact, they were not voiceless, for you could still hear them accompanied by a very short vowel [ə]. If really voiceless, you don’t need any action for it. You can’t say, during the combined action of uttering the [t] some of your vocal organ, such as vocal-cords keeps unmoved at all. Anyway, the voiceless [t] takes time, it may be shorter than normal SCAV, but you couldn’t say it take no time. So, the [be] should be shorter than [bit].  The time of SCAV is roughly equal. I say ‘roughly’ because since the information explosion, the speed of speaking has been accelerated. Now, different language may use different speed for speaking, so we can only say the time of SCAV is roughly equal. Yet the time of syllable was definitely unequal. On the other hand, we can count SCAVs to know the time, while can’t count syllables to know the time. For instance, we may say a broadcaster uttered 300 SCAVs in every minute. We can’t say a broadcaster uttered 200 syllables per minute. SCAV is a unit depends on what you feel, not independent with any letters, since, every letter-based phonetic unit is questionable. Whenever you speak any syllable slowly you will find that ‘sprint’ is ‘s-p-rin-t’ 4 SCAVs.

How to Counting Speaking Sound? The Unit of Sound [I]

Since the sound is important, we have to find out a unit for counting it. The reason or target of language development is in fact looking for more species of sounds. For with more species of sound, a language can have more self-explaining words (compound word) to save the time of learning.  With more species of sound, a language allowed faster thinking speed for its speaker. If you always live in a language of alphabetic system, you will have no chance to feel the feeling of how suddenly the sounds number increased. To count the number of species of sound, we have to know the counting unit first.

Recently, a friend give me some example of how to decide the unit of sound:

Seattle 
[siætl] = 5 phones, 5 mora 
/s-i-æ-t-l/ = 5 phonemes 
/si-ætl/ = 2 syllables 

bean 
[biːn] = 3 phones, 4 mora 
/b-iː-n/ = 3 phonemes 
/biːn/ = 1 syllable 

thought 
[θoːt] = 3 phones, 4 mora 
/θ-oː-t/ = 3 phonemes 
/θoːt/ = 1 syllable 

bare 
[beəɹ] = 4 phones, 4 mora 
/b-eə-ɹ/ = 3 phonemes 
/beəɹ/ = 1 syllable 

house 
[haus] = 4 phones, 4 mora 
/h-au-s/ = 3 phonemes 
/haus/ = 1 syllable 

sky 
[skai] = 4 phones, 4 mora 
/s-k-ai/ = 3 phonemes 
/skai/ = 1 syllable 

sow 
[sou] = 3 phones, 3 mora 
/s-ou/ = 2 phonemes 
/sou/ = 1 syllable 

toy 
[toi] = 3 phones, 3 mora 
/t-oi/ = 2 phonemes 
/toi/ = 1 syllable

I have to say, these examples expressed the four units of sound clearly. But this confirmed me my former understanding of the phonology that it is a study depend on writing symbol not on physical voice. So I ask him: ‘how long a time you think the word ‘cat’ would be lasted.’  The answer is ‘thee unit’. That is acceptable answer for English speaker, because anyway the word ‘cat’ is formed by three letters. But some study show, the word ‘cat’ is two units. It is [ca] and [t], because no one can separate the [c] from [a] in this word. They have to be pronounced together. The idea of three units is depend on writing symbols, and it depend on our linear writing system if the writing system can put the c on top and a on bottom then they may look like one unit, they would say it is two units. This is very important, for without right unit, all the counting of sound would be wrong. And without right calculation, no one can get a right image of language.

Quantity of Sound Species Affect Life Quality

We have said that Linguistic law is a balance between easy to speak (expressing) and easy to remember (learning). While only increase the number of phonetic species can we get benefit from both sides.

The number of phonetic species is the key factor of any language. The more species of sound the better the language. English has roughly 400 different sounds. We suppose there is a language has only two sounds as AB, like Morse code, we may call it as AB language. Suppose in the world, there are only 400 things need to be named, then the English speaker may name each thing by a single sound. But the speaker of AB language some time has to use 9 sounds to name one thing as ninth power of 2 is greater than 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2>400, the word (name) could be ABBABAABA.

That is to say AB language cost nine parts of time to finish the job of English speaker finished in one part time. If both language make compound word like what we said last time that pig-meat vs. pork. Then English speaker can use two sounds to make a compound word but the AB language speaker should double the size of ABBABAABA. It may be like ABBAABBABAABABAABA. That means to say a language has less phonetic species is unlikely to make compound words.

The Esperanto violate this law, for the phonetic species of Esperanto is less than English while it making more compound words than English, the result is that language is harder to express and slow in thinking speed. 

The Most Precious Resource of Information Life

In a forum, someone ask me, the Chinese can be semantic language, why not English? My answer is because English use its sound SCAV lavishly. Sound is the most important resource of a language, use it lavishly, you will pay for it dearly. It no mean to say ancient Chinese had the sense of economy in language issue. In fact, the reason in that in old time, the writing system is too hard for them so they have to use each character carefully step and step the Chinese language turned to be a frugal one. If English language want to be a semantic language, it has to do three things but you may find, each of them is very hard, it would be easier to adopt the already existed Chinese language and do some necessary reform.
There is three ways helping Chinese using sounds in economically the first one is tone, we have discussed already. The second one is that as the Chinese character is always represented by one SCAV(sound), so they used every consonant and vowel carefully. On the other hand, English used them carelessly. For instance, let’s put first consonant ‘b’ with all the vowels, to see how many SCAV(sound) is in use, they are ba, be, bi, bo, bu, bao, buo. Only ‘be’ is in use that means to say, plenty SCAVs had been kept unused in English. Why the people use them so carelessly? The reason is that once you design a word with some prior concept, you can’t follow the scientific rule to choose them. For instance some English words come from onomatopoeia, such as:
Word start with ‘sl’ they could be either ‘hit’ something or slippery
slag, slam, slander, slang, slap, slash, slate, slaughter, slay, slight, sling, slog, slug, slosh, slur, slalom, sledge, sleigh, slick, slide, slip, slither, sloop, slop,sludge.

When you design a word with this intention, you would not combine letters according scientific rule. This caused a huge waste of English SCAV. Only in recent years some single SCAV appeared in English for instance the word ‘yes’ turned to be ‘yea’ and ‘thank’ turned to be ‘ta’. (note: short oral expression had many benefit, for instance, we know the working memory is a period that after you meet an item, within 2 seconds during this time the ability of association around this item reach the top. With shorter words, we may put more items in this period. Besides, short oral expression means faster thinking, for thinking process is a sort of ‘speaking in mind’.) Finally the use of radical help the Chinese increased the utilization rate of sound, we will talk it later.

Law of All Human Languages

My linguistic law is very simple, anyone who understand the combination of mathematics can understand it very well. Every day, what we are talking and listening is but communication by symbols. It is no different with what Morse code have done. So we just counting how many symbols are sending and receiving, then we may understand how the language works.

Linguistic law is a balance between easy to speak (expressing) and easy to remember (learning).only increase the number of sound’s species (SCAV) can get benefit of both side. For instance the compound word ‘pig-meat’ vs. individual word ‘pork’. Once we know what is pig and what is meat, don’t need any learning we know what pig-meat (compound word) is. But such word is too long for expressing, so the ancestor of English speaker invent (or introduce) a word ‘pork’. Repeated each of the words twenty times, you may realize the compound word double the time of the individual word. That is to say if a butcher repeat one thousand times the meaning of pork, using ‘pork’ will save much time and energy than using ‘pig-meat’. As thinking process is in fact speaking in mind, so the thinking speed of ‘pork’ will be faster than ‘pig-meat’. But using ‘pork’ you have to learn (remember) a new word ‘pork’, even if you know what ‘pig’ and ‘meat’ are. The current one million words of English are formed like this. The only reason that we has to learn so many words is to reduce the time and energy of expressing, without this burden. We only need to learn a handful basic words.

This phenomenon is happened in every language so I say the language law is a balance between easy to express and easy to memory. If the number of sound is unchanged, then easy to learn means shorten your life while easy to use means hard to learn.

为贪官说几句话

当今的贪官是哪里来的？这是个有趣的问题。细查他们的历史都能发现，在改革开放初期，他们是顶着当年一群老顽固的压力，特立独行，有胆识，有魄力的人物。那时的中国。死气沉沉，毛的阴魂未散，人们一举手，一投足都要想一想是否违反某种精神束缚。正是这群人，顶着压力上，从而改变了整个中国的面目。当年支持他们改革的动力还是裙带关系，就是，老大有饭吃，小兄弟不能饿着。这样，老大为小兄弟壮胆，小兄弟也为老大壮胆。双方都有一个共识，那就是，不能相信法律，只能相信‘人脉’。‘人脉’是中国的传统观念，因为传统上，法律从来就没有有效地解决过什么问题。大概国家穷了的时候，狼多肉少的时候，都这样。因为社会财富仅能供应少数人过上好日子，多数人只能‘奉献’。但是，目前的中国，财富已经积累到了一定的程度。你的个人财产有几十亿，他的财产有几亿。这两者之间的差别并不大。反正你几辈子用不完。如果在其他国家，贪污的欲望几乎就没有了。可是在中国，很多大官贪污已经不是为了自己而是为了小兄弟。这样的事情就变得可笑了。如果媒体加大对于‘土豪’的讽刺力度，那么，这些人就会失去市场。在海外，任何人都不敢炫富。因为，无数的事实告诉他们，炫富一定没有好下场。既然不能炫富，那么，冒险贪污还有什么意义呢？因此，在海外，当财富积累到一定程度的时候，人们关心的是如何花钱而非如何挣钱。当一个人每天想着花钱的时候，你说他还会贪污吗？所谓花钱也是有品位的，你把钱花在名牌汽车，豪宅上面，别人照样看不起你。所以，富翁花钱往往出人意料。太空遨游只有第一个这样干的人能够赢得好的评语，第二个就是赶时髦了。投资发展高科技，你要懂才成，不是想投资就能成功的。换句话说，真正的大资本家和大财主的道德修养及生活品位都比共产党领袖高得多。当年，共产党带头打倒这些人，实际上就是破坏人类的道德观。直到今天，中国人的道德观念无法建立的根本原因还在于此。想要绕过这个根本的问题，从新建立一套道德观念。对于六十年的挫败拒不承认，可乎？

Speak Esperanto, Your Life Even Shorten

Last time, we have talked about that speak English, your life will be shorten. But speak Esperanto, your life will be even shorter. The demonstration would be easier. To prove the life of English speaker, we need combination of mathematics, but to prove the Esperanto causes your life shorter just need addition and subtraction.

If you know some words of Esperanto you may find that trying to be a semantic language, nearly all the words in Esperanto double the size of English words. If you don’t know the words of Esperanto, you may check them in an internet dictionary: http://www.lexicool.com/esperanto-dictionary-translation.asp

Filly= ĉevalidino,

Pork= porkaĵo

Let’s check the second example. In English the word ‘pork’ is one syllable, while in Esperanto is ‘porkaĵo’ three syllables. Why this happened? Because Esperanto is trying to be a semantic language, that is using self-explained words instead the normal words, the ‘ĵo’ means ‘meat’, the whole word of ‘porkaĵo’ means ‘pig’s meat’. From this we can rethink why the English ancestors introduce a word ‘pork’ to replace the compound word of ‘pig-meat’? Because the word ‘pork’ is shorter than ‘pig meat’ in pronunciation. A butcher utter one thousand times this word would save a lot of energy than utter the word ‘pig-meat’.

The inventor of Esperanto didn’t know this, so they invent a language full of semantic words like ‘porkaĵo’. The result is simple. Since most of the Esperanto words double the size of English, then throughout the life you speak Esperanto will half the information intake, during that period.

Speaking English, Your Life Will be Shorten

It doesn’t mean to say, your physic life will be shorten, but if during the same life span, you only intake half the information as other language, isn’t that mean to say you have waste half of your life?

Now, let’s demonstrate it.

One Chinese person takes a card from a deck of playing cards randomly, he asked his Chinese friend in English: ‘What this is?’ By these three words, his friend knows what the card is. While an English person asks the same question to his friend, he doesn’t know what the card is. The trick is the tone. What is tone? In YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZB9-vZFesk the girl will show you what tones in mandarin are.  The Mandarin has four tones for any syllable, then ‘what’ can be whāt, whát, whǎt, whàt. They use the first one for spade, the second one for heart, the third one for diamond and the fourth one for club, (see table below).  After this, they use the four ‘this’ for 1, 2, 3, 4, and four ‘is’ as well. 4x4=16>13, the 14 is red joker and 15 is black joker, table:

From this example, you may understand that in every syllable, the English speaker miss out 4-1=3 information compare with Mandarin speaker. Within every two combined syllables, 4x4-1=15 information missed out. Within every three combined syllables, 4x4x4-1=63 information miss out. The formula is 4ⁿ-1. Just think about, during the whole life, how many information does English speaker miss out comparing a Mandarin speaker?