🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <1993Jan8.163818.13749@cs.wayne.edu> seeta@eng.wayne.edu (Seetamraju UdayaBhaskar Sarma)

There's one big problem with logographic scripts (which I realized
the hard way - by starting to learn Chinese). If you don't already
recognize a sign you have no way of (a) guessing what it means or (b)
guessing how to pronounce it so you can ask someone!

Geoffrey Sampson in his book on Writing Systems argues that the
English sytem is the about best because it works both phonetically (very
roughly) and logographically. However, as an native speaker of
English, he could be accused of chauvinism. (Though he claims that
Korean is actually the best system ever invented.)

Peter


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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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