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An experiment with phonetic writing
- An experiment with phonetic writing
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RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 01:22 PM
(07-09-2026, 12:34 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this thought experiment I am carrying on conversations in French! To do so I must be able to reliably distinguish between phonemes in context, both as a listener and to a reasonable degree produce them.
Translate:
Bonju! Sava?
Sava biean, etua?
Sava biean. T'qua tcokuptu?
Jevuea epari sesuar, etua?
Jevuea mepromene.
This is the simplest dialogue that anyone with a basic knowledge of French should be able to understand. You’ll get clues about the original form of the dialogue if you read it aloud (for example, the word “epari” can tell you a lot). -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
rikforto > 07-09-2026, 01:29 PM
(07-09-2026, 01:22 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Translate
Unlike in the thought experiment, I do not actually speak French, nor did I invent this transcription method. So, the fact this is opaque to real me is my point. There's no comparison between a person who is conversational in the spoken language and intimately familiar with the writing system in question and naively trying to puzzle out an unrecognizable writing system in a language they cannot reliably understand. -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
Jorge_Stolfi > 07-09-2026, 02:38 PM
(07-09-2026, 01:17 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.jan4 sam1 mei6 gam1, zyu2 bou2 ng5 zong6, on1 zing1 san1, ding6 wan4 paak3, zi2 ging1 gwai3, ceoi4 ce4 hei3, ming4 muk6, hoi1 sam1 jik1 zi3. gau2 fuk6 hing1 san1 jin4 nin4
So it seems that you transcribed sam1 and san1 (3rd and 9th from the end) the same way?
I expect that the VMS will turn out to be much worse...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 02:57 PM
(07-09-2026, 02:38 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So it seems that you transcribed sam1 and san1 (3rd and 9th from the end) the same way?
All right.
In the process of writing, I had to add new letters to record sounds that were not present in the sound. But then, to avoid redundancy, I decided to stop at this.
After all, this was originally part of the experiment. -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 03:01 PM
(07-09-2026, 01:29 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's no comparison between a person who is conversational in the spoken language and intimately familiar with the writing system in question and naively trying to puzzle out an unrecognizable writing system in a language they cannot reliably understand.
You can speak French without knowing how to write it. Don’t try to dispute this; there are still completely unwritten languages in the world, and people somehow manage to communicate in them.
The only nuance is that you will write the language the way you hear it. And here, unfortunately, you can hear it in different ways: ujuvi, oudjouvi, oujove, oujudervey, etc.
I’m not a proponent of the Chinese theory (because it’s largely unprovable), but I can’t deny this fact.
Oh, on top of that, you might not speak French perfectly
There’s such a thing as an accent. If you don’t understand what I mean, watch some movies where Russians try to speak broken‑English.
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RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 03:36 PM
I don’t know how it will sound, but it seems to me that in this branch you can experiment and reproduce the results of other theories as well
. This would work very well, as it would demonstrate the reproducibility of the results and the operating principle of the described cipher/language/etc.
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RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
rikforto > 07-09-2026, 03:41 PM
I think you are trying to draw a few distinctions generally that do not apply specifically to the example at present.
(07-09-2026, 03:01 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can speak French without knowing how to write it. Don’t try to dispute this; there are still completely unwritten languages in the world, and people somehow manage to communicate in them.
I understand this is a common state of affairs but as I understand the VMS, it is in fact written down. We must surely then be talking about a written form of the language. What exactly are we trying to model otherwise?
Likewise, I appreciate that this might be a naive attempt at transcribing the language, but a French speaker (even a second language learner) is not attempting to transcribe a language he does not know. To know spoken French is to know its phonology well enough to be able to parse these distinctions on the fly. He is also not trying to adapt the Latin alphabet if the VMS is what we are trying to model, but can capture the phonemic distinctions---that he can largely understand, by hypothesis---in a natural way.
For Chinese languages, the tones may be difficult to hear (though y'all are making this sound wayyy harder to learn than it really is) if you can't speak the language, but a person who cannot reliably identify the tones is a person who cannot speak the language and cannot be described as a person who has learned the local language.
Maybe I do not understand what we are attempting to model here, but it seems very different from a speaker of the language inventing a script to take dictation! -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 04:05 PM
(07-09-2026, 03:41 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think you are trying to draw a few distinctions generally that do not apply specifically to the example at present.
I’m speaking generally.
(07-09-2026, 03:41 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Likewise, I appreciate that this might be a naive attempt at transcribing the language, but a French speaker (even a second language learner) is not attempting to transcribe a language he does not know. To know spoken French is to know its phonology well enough to be able to parse these distinctions on the fly.
You don’t understand me and perhaps you don’t read what I write very carefully. You may know and distinguish the sounds, but you don’t know HOW WORDS ARE SPELLED.
Yes, you won’t confuse o with ou or au, but how would you know how to spell the word maintenant (mantenoun, if you go by the sounds)? This is assuming you’ve never seen any texts in French.
But fine, French, find one book and study the written words to understand how they are spelled. In the case of the Chinese language, you only have hieroglyphs, and not only are they difficult to write, but they don’t convey the phonetics at all. That is, if you know Chinese but are afraid of making a mistake, you can’t look up the pronunciation of a word in a dictionary.
Also, I don’t understand the essence of your discussion method — you shift the topic to some abstract direction that isn’t related to the original subject, asking endless questions. What does this prove or disprove (since you’re not addressing the theory itself)? -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
rikforto > 07-09-2026, 04:35 PM
(07-09-2026, 04:05 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.you’re not addressing the theory itself
Quite admittedly!
(07-09-2026, 03:41 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe I do not understand what we are attempting to model here, but it seems very different from a speaker of the language inventing a script to take dictation!
After your most recent response I still don't understand if, how, or why your model differs. But it still seems to me that a French speaker would not invent an inconsistent writing system, and could distinguish French phonemes! -
RE: An experiment with phonetic writing
ololololo > 07-09-2026, 04:46 PM
(07-09-2026, 04:35 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.a French speaker would not invent an inconsistent writing system
Yes, he didn’t, but I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about how, in any case, he would perceive the words aurally differently, and what he would write would be incomprehensible to a native speaker.