How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?
What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
don’t know what Linear B is, but’d be surprised if it doesn’t contain things that point
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
Neither does Indonesian.
transition said:
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
don’t know what Linear B is, but’d be surprised if it doesn’t contain things that point
Generally Indonesian doesn’t contain plurals. You just say the singular twice.
good part of language is pointing
not so different to the pointing finger, and eyes on, moving to
larry does it, variously, including with his nose
Tamb said:
transition said:
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
don’t know what Linear B is, but’d be surprised if it doesn’t contain things that point
Generally Indonesian doesn’t contain plurals. You just say the singular twice.
Does saying things twice indicate ‘two’, or ‘more than one’?
Rule 303 said:
Tamb said:
transition said:don’t know what Linear B is, but’d be surprised if it doesn’t contain things that point
Generally Indonesian doesn’t contain plurals. You just say the singular twice.
Does saying things twice indicate ‘two’, or ‘more than one’?
That could quickly become awkward.
Interviewer: How many bass instrument bass instrument in your band?
Sergeant: We have two tuba tuba and two contrabass sarrusophone contrabass sarrussophone.
transition said:
larry does it, variously, including with his nose
I seem to recall reading somewhere that primates and dogs are the only two species that understand the gesture of ‘pointing’.
Bubblecar said:
Rule 303 said:
Tamb said:Generally Indonesian doesn’t contain plurals. You just say the singular twice.
Does saying things twice indicate ‘two’, or ‘more than one’?
That could quickly become awkward.
Interviewer: How many bass instrument bass instrument in your band?
Sergeant: We have two tuba tuba and two contrabass sarrusophone contrabass sarrussophone.
Even the simplest examples seem ridiculous:
I I will eat two banana banana for lunch lunch over the next two day day.
Rule 303 said:
Tamb said:
transition said:don’t know what Linear B is, but’d be surprised if it doesn’t contain things that point
Generally Indonesian doesn’t contain plurals. You just say the singular twice.
Does saying things twice indicate ‘two’, or ‘more than one’?
More than one. A number would be used to indicate a precise number.
Tamb said:
More than one. A number would be used to indicate a precise number.
There you go then. A silly practice.
‘What you need to know about celebrating NYE in Sydney’ – ABC News.
Easy.
1. Stay well away from the CBD, or the Harbour.
2. Avoid large crowds or large parties elsewhere.
3. If you’re tempted to do otherwise, seek mental health assistance quickly.
Rule 303 said:
Bubblecar said:
Rule 303 said:Does saying things twice indicate ‘two’, or ‘more than one’?
That could quickly become awkward.
Interviewer: How many bass instrument bass instrument in your band?
Sergeant: We have two tuba tuba and two contrabass sarrusophone contrabass sarrussophone.
Even the simplest examples seem ridiculous:
I I will eat two banana banana for lunch lunch over the next two day day.
Two of something is the number two & the singular of the noun e.g
Dua anjing (Two dog)
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
Tamb said:
Rule 303 said:
Bubblecar said:That could quickly become awkward.
Interviewer: How many bass instrument bass instrument in your band?
Sergeant: We have two tuba tuba and two contrabass sarrusophone contrabass sarrussophone.
Even the simplest examples seem ridiculous:
I I will eat two banana banana for lunch lunch over the next two day day.
Two of something is the number two & the singular of the noun e.g
Dua anjing (Two dog)
Fair enough.
captain_spalding said:
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
captain_spalding said:
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Tamb said:
captain_spalding said:
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Oops. Double post. Sorry.
Tamb said:
Tamb said:
captain_spalding said:
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Oops. Double post. Sorry.
A post post?
Tamb said:
Tamb said:
captain_spalding said:
4. Put posts in the correct thread.
A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Oops. Double post. Sorry.
Welcome to the Blunder Club.
Or a post post post?
Rule 303 said:
Tamb said:
Tamb said:A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Oops. Double post. Sorry.
A post post?
‘Post post’ is when you make a post, and then realise that you made an error with it.
Rule 303 said:
Tamb said:
Tamb said:A dog anjing. Two dogs Dua anjing. Many dogs Banjak anjing
Notice, the word anjing does not change for single, precise number or many.
Oops. Double post. Sorry.
A post post?
Dua post (Precise number)
Rule 303 said:
Or a post post post?
Like a post after several other posts?
one is the lonliest number.
Tamb said:
Rule 303 said:
Or a post post post?
Like a post after several other posts?
There’s no way to tell. It could be a post made after a single post, or after more than one posts.
roughbarked said:
one is the lonliest number.
I’m here to tell you that minus one is way more lonely.
Tamb said:
roughbarked said:
one is the lonliest number.
I’m here to tell you that minus one is way more lonely.
ultimately, we are all alone.
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
Your question is quite vague. A number of languages have been “designed”, with Esperanto the most obvious example; it also has a very small root vocabulary, with other words created by combining prefixes, roots, and suffixes (although as it has evolved other words have been borrowed, largely from European languages.) Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.
One of the features of natural languages is that they involve much duplication, so words are accidentally omitted the meaning can still be gleaned (for example, one of William Safire’s tips for good writing was, “Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”) This feature (repetition) is exploited by cryptanalists.
Also, Linear B is a written form of ancient Greek, not a unique language in itself, so it’d be ancient ancient Greek that has no “the” (I’d have to check this, though.) Some written languages, called “abjads,” have no written vowels; an example is Hebrew; it may be that some languages have no written articles (again, I don’t know.)
Of the million or so words in the English language, most are technical terms only used by people in a specific field.
We could go through the exercise of paring a language back to its bare essentials: whatever that minimum is, maybe 1000 or 2000 words. Then we’d need to reconstruct all of those hundreds of thousands of highly technical terms using more and more convoluted phrases. You’d probably end with phrases of thirty to fifty words to cover words such as mucocutaneous, orthomolecular, peramelid, heligimbal. So by reducing vocabulary you add complexity.
roughbarked said:
Tamb said:
roughbarked said:
one is the lonliest number.
I’m here to tell you that minus one is way more lonely.
ultimately, we are all alone.
in fact 1 is a very interesting quantity, of qualities, too easy to underestimate.
lot of mix’n match, try’n test (capacity for) about human language, English anyway, can’t say of others.
fortunately anticipating what anything might mean is not a complete black hole, given the somewhat universal similarities of how minds do what they do, evolved on the same planet and all that.
the capacity to expand language is related to the capacity to compress it.
btm said:
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
Your question is quite vague. A number of languages have been “designed”, with Esperanto the most obvious example; it also has a very small root vocabulary, with other words created by combining prefixes, roots, and suffixes (although as it has evolved other words have been borrowed, largely from European languages.) Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.
One of the features of natural languages is that they involve much duplication, so words are accidentally omitted the meaning can still be gleaned (for example, one of William Safire’s tips for good writing was, “Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”) This feature (repetition) is exploited by cryptanalists.
Also, Linear B is a written form of ancient Greek, not a unique language in itself, so it’d be ancient ancient Greek that has no “the” (I’d have to check this, though.) Some written languages, called “abjads,” have no written vowels; an example is Hebrew; it may be that some languages have no written articles (again, I don’t know.)
Thanks btm, I’ll chase those references up. And the reference to lack of plurals in indonesian.
I was also thinking about pidgin and creole languages, languages created to facilitate verbal communication between people who don’t share a common language.
Very often a pair of common words, or a phrase, is and can be successfully used in place of a new word. These come from New Guinea.
For a purely verbal language consisting only of grunts, see that episode of “home improvement” and this old thread.
Https://tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/?main=https%3A//tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/topics/4267/
> Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.
That’s exactly what I was looking for. Now to learn how to use it.
It even simplifies the alphabet. Only 9 consonants, compare Korean with 14 consonants, and English with 21 consonants.
mollwollfumble said:
> Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Yet it couldn’t do what you explicitly asked: cover every topic in Wikipedia.
dv said:
mollwollfumble said:
> Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Yet it couldn’t do what you explicitly asked: cover every topic in Wikipedia.
Why not? How would it need to be expanded?
mollwollfumble said:
dv said:
mollwollfumble said:
> Another constructed language, Toki Pona (http://tokipona.org/) has 123 words.That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Yet it couldn’t do what you explicitly asked: cover every topic in Wikipedia.
Why not? How would it need to be expanded?
Isn’t it obvious? There are endless technical terms in Wikipedia, and endless terms specific to particular cultures etc.
Bubblecar said:
mollwollfumble said:
dv said:Yet it couldn’t do what you explicitly asked: cover every topic in Wikipedia.
Why not? How would it need to be expanded?
Isn’t it obvious? There are endless technical terms in Wikipedia, and endless terms specific to particular cultures etc.
Not obvious. Technical terms could be constructed from a collection of smaller words, I noticed this in German all the time. As for terms specific to particular cultures, I can’t think of one off-hand.
mollwollfumble said:
Bubblecar said:
mollwollfumble said:Why not? How would it need to be expanded?
Isn’t it obvious? There are endless technical terms in Wikipedia, and endless terms specific to particular cultures etc.
Not obvious. Technical terms could be constructed from a collection of smaller words, I noticed this in German all the time. As for terms specific to particular cultures, I can’t think of one off-hand.
Technical terms in English are already often constructed from smaller words. The Germans take it to stupid extremes and it certainly doesn’t make their language more economical or elegant.
As for terms specific to particular cultures, there are vast numbers of nouns for objects and practices that are unique to this or that culture. You could construct phonetic equivalents in a new language but that would simply expand the vocabulary of that language.
Languages with large and rich vocabularies are a good thing, not a bad thing.
mollwollfumble said:
Bubblecar said:
mollwollfumble said:Why not? How would it need to be expanded?
Isn’t it obvious? There are endless technical terms in Wikipedia, and endless terms specific to particular cultures etc.
Not obvious. Technical terms could be constructed from a collection of smaller words, I noticed this in German all the time. As for terms specific to particular cultures, I can’t think of one off-hand.
Are you looking for the smallest discrete language?
Rule 303 said:
mollwollfumble said:
Bubblecar said:Isn’t it obvious? There are endless technical terms in Wikipedia, and endless terms specific to particular cultures etc.
Not obvious. Technical terms could be constructed from a collection of smaller words, I noticed this in German all the time. As for terms specific to particular cultures, I can’t think of one off-hand.
Are you looking for the smallest discrete language?
Sort of, smallest fully functional non-static language. Keeping in mind that there’s no perfect answer.
I’m thinking of the analogy between language and genetics. The human genome contains a lot of frankly bad stuff such as ERVs as well as a lot of real junk such as the same base repeated umpteen times in a row.
So attempts have been made to find compact genomes with only 3% noocoding DNA, bladderwort, or only 182 genes for a naturally occurring organism. Ventner made a fully functional bacteria with 470 genes.
Going back to languages, many natural languages are difficult to write and learn. Like genomes they contain a lot of obsolete, unnecessary, and contradictory features. So I’m interested in how much can be cut out of a language without compromising its inclusivity.
furious said:
Thing Explainer
Yes, like that.
One of the reasons I mentioned wikipedia in the OP is that a couple of years ago I downloaded the entire English edition and parsed the lot to get the word list with occurrence frequencies. I did that because I wanted a better word list than is available in dictionaries and in public “word” lists on the web.
Steve(Primus) was the cunning linguist. Woodie…?
I did only two of units of Ling, but my impression is that there’s languages spoken by only a few dozen people, of only a couple of hundred words. As for whether they would be sufficient to express the totality of Wiki… hmmm… I dunno.
I put the notion of Steve joining this discussion to Woodie. We’ll see what comes of it…
If we define words fairly broadly, we only need two of them.
For instance, 0 and 1.
The Rev Dodgson said:
If we define words fairly broadly, we only need two of them.For instance, 0 and 1.
I was thinking of that as an extreme example of increasing complexity while decreasing vocabulary but thought better of it.
You only need a small family of subatomic particles to build a universe, but we humans don’t experience it on that level.
transition said:
roughbarked said:
Tamb said:I’m here to tell you that minus one is way more lonely.
ultimately, we are all alone.
in fact 1 is a very interesting quantity, of qualities, too easy to underestimate.
But each of which, ultimately stand alone.
The Rev Dodgson said:
If we define words fairly broadly, we only need two of them.For instance, 0 and 1.
I was thinking that for letters three would be better, 0, 1 and undefined, like in computer logic. Undefined would give spaces between words.
> You only need a small family of subatomic particles to build a universe
True or false? Interesting topic. With resonance particles you could argue that there are an infinite number of subatomic particles. But how many of those are necessary?
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
I suppose one way to answer this question is to examine Roget’s Thesaurus to see how many concepts are listed.
KJW said:
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
I suppose one way to answer this question is to examine Roget’s Thesaurus to see how many concepts are listed.
Good point. Why don’t I try that.
Looking at my old Roget’s they have exactly 1,000 concepts, for approximately 100,000 English words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B
read some of that, it’d require some study, a headache possibly.
there appears to be many words of English that point, well, it’s my naive way of describing whatever, i’m sure there’s a proper word for it.
with familiarity with symbols, layout etc, and subject, a lot of pointing becomes unnecessary.
if the cat sat on the mat becomes cat sat on mat, only complaint you’d get from me is the’s more given to a gentle intrusion into my consciousness. I can work with the-poverty, but you’d better find a nice way to say cat. The lends to a pleasing exhalation.
transition said:
Wow, deep, man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Bread some of that, it’d require some study, a headache possibly.
there appears to be many words of English that point, well, it’s my naive way of describing whatever, i’m sure there’s a proper word for it.
with familiarity with symbols, layout etc, and subject, a lot of pointing becomes unnecessary.
if the cat sat on the mat becomes cat sat on mat, only complaint you’d get from me is the’s more given to a gentle intrusion into my consciousness. I can work with the-poverty, but you’d better find a nice way to say cat. The lends to a pleasing exhalation.
>Wow, deep, man.
no worse i’d imagine than the average persons use of the word.
it’s not something one thinks about much, humble the. Think about it as much as we do tongue placement as vocalizing.
transition said:
>Wow, deep, man.no worse i’d imagine than the average persons use of the word.
it’s not something one thinks about much, humble the. Think about it as much as we do tongue placement as vocalizing.
Yes. “Cat sat on mat” seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Apparently word “the” was not used at all in Greek in 1450 BC, was used very little in Greek in Homer’s works circa 700 or 600 BC, and was used all the time in classical Greek of 430 BC and later.
mollwollfumble said:
I think “the” “a” “his” “her” “it’s” “my” “your” “mum’s” “dad’s” etc are important words.
transition said:
>Wow, deep, man.no worse i’d imagine than the average persons use of the word.
it’s not something one thinks about much, humble the. Think about it as much as we do tongue placement as vocalizing.
Yes. “Cat sat on mat” seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Apparently word “the” was not used at all in Greek in 1450 BC, was used very little in Greek in Homer’s works circa 700 or 600 BC, and was used all the time in classical Greek of 430 BC and later.
transition said:
it’s not something one thinks about much, humble the.
As the definite article, it is distinguished from the indefinite article “a” (or “an”).
Actually, the distinction between “a” and “an” illustrates that vocal flow is a significant part of language.
mollwollfumble said:
transition said:
>Wow, deep, man.no worse i’d imagine than the average persons use of the word.
it’s not something one thinks about much, humble the. Think about it as much as we do tongue placement as vocalizing.
Yes. “Cat sat on mat” seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Apparently word “the” was not used at all in Greek in 1450 BC, was used very little in Greek in Homer’s works circa 700 or 600 BC, and was used all the time in classical Greek of 430 BC and later.
:), except I imagine a toddler pointing, with no regard for the intrusion into my thoughts, (“Cat sat on mat”)
interesting subject, though don’t think i’ve got there yet, to what the OP’s really about.
i’m contemplating what’s involved in compression of language, of machine compared with human minds.
wondering what mentalese is comparable with in the machine world.
In organic chemical nomenclature, many functional groups have both prefix and suffix forms. So, a bit of redundancy can be quite helpful.
mollwollfumble said:
How small could a language be and still be big enough to encompass everything in wikipedia?What prompted this thought is reading about the translation of Linear B, which for instance doesn’t contain the word “the”. Which made me wonder how many other words are surplus to requirements?
A thought yesterday reminded me that I wrote many years ago that a backpacker in could get by with just six words in English. Since then, the words have changed a bit. How about?