[Talk] Upcoming VMS lecture in NYC

[Linda]

Well i already ignored the poor wording and jumped to the phonetic spelling idea, ie so someone else not knowing the language, but able to read the phonetic writing, could read it out loud, and others who do know the language would understand them.

Like this



But it is dictation taken of speech in a language not understood, with a special character set for the purpose?

That is even worse than the phonetic dictation system i initially understood it to be, where the scribe could understand the speech, but not necessarily write it as we would expect, i had envisioned a native x speaking person inventing their own phonetic spelling alphabet. Today we have the IPA but you can also do it with native English equivalents, if it is English speakers you expect to be reading it.

Again, how can one say this is the case with any confidence without showing it in action, ie deconstructing the process.
 (ie here we have someone writing "see voo play" (showing how the glyphs work phonetically) which we believe was meant to be written graphically as "s'il vous plait", and therefore it is french speech as written by an english speaking person in a custom glyph set ), (except much worse because you are implying that no one has ever read the language that is being spoken therefore only speakers of this language would have any hope of recognizing the similarities and hence the one way cipher eventuality) 

Without showing how it works, it seems no better an explanation than any guess made about what it is, especially in that one cannot prove it is not so without figuring it out for real, since there is nothing offered to accept or refute except the premise itself.

I guess i am looking for at least some reason this idea is thought to be correct. I just seems so out of the blue...