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?