Another Short History of Linguistics (72)

One thing that Leibniz knowing but never said, that is with more basic symbols an input system could be more effective. This was the reason of even he invented the binary system yet his mechanic computer using decimal system. Because binary system could be very slow and decimal system faster. For with one operation, a binary system could only extend from 2 to 4, while with decimal system, one operation could extend from 10 to 100. That is my basic idea of why a language has more species of sound would faster than a language with less species of sound. And in fact the electronic computer using their symbols as ASCII or UNICODE instead of the simple Morse code is based on the same thinking.

We have said that the alphabetic language was looking for a method to shorten their oral expression during a long developing period, the first step was adopting voiceless consonant. Another method was adopting an expressing structure called grammar. But both of them didn’t fulfil the target successfully.