Comments on: Rational Orthography

By: kfaraday

kfaraday — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 22:19:04 +0000

please ask them to make a browser add-on! i’d be really excited to learn this kind of thing hee

By: Daniel H

Daniel H — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 05:37:49 +0000

Magic: The Gathering had the Unhinged announcement on April 1st. IIRC, some of the announcement went to three levels deep of “serious, no only joking, no actually serious”.

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By: hawkice

hawkice — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 18:08:10 +0000

I honestly know very little about Korean (although I think they use to / still use a few Chinese characters mixed in with Hangul). I did spend some googles on this trying to nail down my thoughts, and I think I can supply terms that Google much better, if you are curious about how to determine this for Korean:

Highly analytic languages can have something akin to “liguistic reusability” inversely proportional to how isolating the language is. Chinese is highly analytic and yet has a relatively high morpheme to word ratio, allowing a lot of words for a few base morphemes without the hassles of many other languages (having inflections agree with new constructions, etc.)

In addition to this, Chinese distinguishes in writing between homophones of different meanings, which is probably a good move if you want the reuse, but imposes a cost to fluency.

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By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 11:02:32 +0000

That was fun.

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By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 10:51:40 +0000

Disagree. I find mirrored much easier to read. Maybe it’s from inadvertently reading the solutions to puzzles in the newspaper. I’m old. They used to do that. They used to have newspapers.

With more practice, I bet I could get much more fluent at it. You could, too.

I’m viewing this on my phone. The mirrored writing is a giant fail. Sad. I’ll have to see it on a computer for the full effect.

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By: RCF

RCF — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 05:49:18 +0000

It seems to me that Gray Code is also boustrophedonish.

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By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 04:58:48 +0000

Thomas Jefferson’s 1784 system for surveying the Midwest based on latitude and longitude numbers the 36 squares in each 6 mile by 6 mile unit of land according to a boustrophedonic method:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System#Survey_design_and_execution

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By: Deiseach

Deiseach — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 02:41:48 +0000

Elissa, what confuses me is the bits I’ve read where it’s more or less:

Aggrieved complaint: That other guy is terrible! He’s a dreadful choice! He’s just using her, why is she choosing to be with him?

Me reading along: I have no idea. Like the example I heard my workmates discussing, about this guy who has a string of girlfriends but is not particularly attractive – apparently he’s very charming though, if you interact personally with him. Well, he’d want to be, wouldn’t he?

Him: I’m much nicer! I’d treat her way better!

Me still reading along: That may be true. What can you do, though? Human relationships, eh?

Him: So she should sleep with me and not with him!

Me: Whoa, whoa, whoa, there sunshine. There’s no should about any of this: people like who they like, and you can’t claim to deserve that Girl A should choose you over that creep Just Because.

Honestly, it reminds me of nothing so much as the 17th century poets writing scathing poems about “Why Is She Sleeping With Him And Not Me?”

I get the same mixed messages: women should sleep with every guy who asks them, except if they do that they’re sluts but if they don’t do that they’re uppity bitches who think they deserve alphas; I want her to sleep with me first time of asking on a casual sex basis, but I want her to like me for myself as well, but I don’t want any emotional entanglement, but I want this to be about more than sex, but I want to be able to dump her when it’s convenient, and if she sleeps with anyone before or after me she’s a slut.

Honestly – really, really glad to be aromantic and asexual if this is what’s out there.

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By: FullMeta_Rationalist

FullMeta_Rationalist — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 00:30:32 +0000

What do you think of Korean? Korean strikes me as the best compromise between having-an-alphabet [0] and Boustrophedon-friendly. Is this a good idea or is this Dymaxian [1]? IANALinguist, so I have no idea.

[0] What’s the terminology for having-an-alphabet? The closest I could come up with was “Romanized”.

[1] Yes, I am going to say this whenever I can until it gets frindled. Humor me.

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By: Mark S.

Mark S. — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 21:51:32 +0000

Boustrophedon would work much better perhaps with an alphabet that was not chiral. Though maybe not. The ancients used it, but they also read very slowly, sub vocalizing all the words ( per St Augustine Who considered St Ambrose a prodigy for being able to read silently). On a slightly related note, Egyptian could be written any direction, but the text direction was revealed by the direction the bird hieroglyphs were facing.

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