[OT] The nature of language

[Richmond Mathewson]

One of the things that needs to be debated is something that affects newbies and old-hands alike:

In 1930 Ogden and Richards invented 'Basic English', an 850 core-English that could be (supposedly) learnt by any Epsilon Semi-Moron (to borrow a politically incorrect prase from Aldous Huxley - but a very 1930-ish phrase) in 60 hours:

http://www.basic-english.org/

and once you have finished laughing yourself silly that 'stockings' is considered one of the basic 850 words you will see that they had some sort of at least semi-valid point.

Of course, George Orwell mocked Ogden & Richards with his Newspeak.

NOW - imagine a "core xTalk" that enabled the newbie to get his/her feet wet incredibly rapidly (and not get blocked by  the "templates + drag-n-drop" school of HyperStudio) but could then be extended to a fuller, richer, full-blown xTalk at a later stage.

Um . . .

full of holes . . .

As George Orwell pointed out - the idea of Newspeak was to reduce speech to thought-stopping cliches - i.e. prevent any creativity whatsoever.

What is super about xTalk is that it has space fro a tremendous amount of creativity just because, unlike Basic English and Newspeak, it is "wobbly round the edges".

However it is the "wobbliness" that may mean that xTalk becomes an increasingly coterie obsession, and increasingly inaccessible to new would-be xTalkers.

The problem is that a rigid one-to-one semantically mapped language cannot then be "unrigidified" in mid-learning process without considerable psychological fall-out.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
 
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"Philosophical problems are confusions arising owing to the fluidity of meanings users attach to words and phrases."
                                       Mathewson, 2006
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