Re: [9fans] Simplified Chinese plan 9

[Daniel Lyons <fusion@storytotell.org>]

On Sep 12, 2009, at 1:05 AM, Eris Discordia wrote:

> There's a discussion of evolution of languages that involves a  
> language going from pidgin to creole to full-blown. Maybe "text-ese"  
> is some sort of pidgin, or more leniently creole, that draws on the  
> "speakers'" native language but the point here is that it will never  
> evolve into a full-blown language.


Once again, words you use recklessly turn out to have actual  
definitions. From Wikipedia:

"A pidgin language is a simplified language that develops as a means  
of communication between two or more groups that do not have a  
language in common..."

"A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that  
originates from a mixture of various languages. The lexicon of a  
creole usually consists of words clearly borrowed from the parent  
languages, except for phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand,  
the grammar often has original features and may differ substantially  
from those of the parent languages."

I'm sure you'll provide us with the definitions from Merriam-Webster  
as well.

In other words, a pidgin is what you get when you have two groups  
without a common language being forced to communicate. A creole is  
what you get when their kids learn the pidgin as a first language.  
Linguists and physicists have a bad habit of making their jargon  
colorful so I'll only deduct half the usual points.

I agree with your conclusion, but I disagree with a couple steps in  
your reasoning. Namely, I don't think you could discover a systemic  
grammatical deviation from English in leet or text-speak or whatever.  
These are novel and amusing orthographies and in-crowd jargon and  
nothing more—people pronounce ROFL and LOL to be ironic and cute, not  
because they think they're words and would be surprised to learn their  
true origin. My wife and her best friend have a policy of pronouncing  
those abbreviations by spelling them out and then saying the last word  
("double-you tee ef fuck") to be funny. Also, plenty of people think  
in English differently than I do yet we all manage to communicate to  
the same degree (i.e. poorly but well enough to get by).

I also doubt that we'll have the kind of technology you're talking  
about, because I think 90% of the hard part of being a programmer  
comes from learning to think rigorously and that will be the stumbling  
block for anything digital that wants to try and digitize our  
thoughts. This is also the crux of my argument against the idea that  
computers will someday program themselves: the real barrier isn't  
hardware or motivation, it's that by the time you teach someone to be  
explicit enough that a computer can derive what they're trying to do,  
you've made them a programmer already (see Prolog for example). Same  
with strong AI: nobody has a clue how to word the problem precisely  
enough to write a program to solve it.

—
Daniel Lyons