Jason Bassford wrote:
>...
> > The difficulty of learning how to write in a particular language has
> > nothing to do with how many symbols there are in its alphabet. Hmmm,
> > no,
>
> BTW: You were actually close on your second example. The
> difficulty of learning how to write in a particular language DOES have
> very little to do with how many symbols there are in its alphabet.
> (Writing well is a different matter - but you've got to know how to
> write at all before you can move on to quality.) But learning the
> basic manipulation of the symbols is, mostly, independent of the
> number of symbols themselves.
As any Chinese character can in principle be a Japanese Kanji,
some Japanese dictionaries listed about 50,000 as late as the
Second World War. However, during the occupation of Japan in
1946, Monbusho, or the Japanese Ministry of Education, began the
task of simplifying the language. At that time, the general
public's ability to read newspapers and magazines required
knowledge of at least 4,000 Kanji.
So, after careful research on character frequency within the
language, Japan's Ministry of Education established 1,850
"Appropriate Use Characters" in 1946 called the Tôyô Kanji, and
declared that only these Kanji should be used in printed public
material such as newspapers ...
-- `All about Kanji' <http://joyo96.org/Kanji.html>
> Any linguist will tell you that
> learning the grammar of a language, although certainly not unrelated
> to the syntax, is quite different from knowing the syntax of a
> language.
Wow, count the logical fallacies. Use of anonymous authority, with `any
linguist will tell you'. And ignoratio elenchi, arguing (incorrectly, by
the way) that grammar and syntax are independent of each other -- when
we're actually discussing the number of lexemes, something which (except
in extreme cases) is pretty much unrelated to either grammar *or* syntax.
> Aside from needing to know some very basic syntax in order
> to get a start on the grammar, the syntax is pretty much arbitrary and
> has little bearing on the learning of the grammar. Also, while we're
> on this particular subject <grin>, having more syntax can actually be
> more beneficial to expressing oneself than having less syntax. So if
> you really want to follow through on the written/spoken word analogy,
> we should be pushing for more keywords not less. (Hmmm....)
>...
Okay, if you're going to get all linguistic, first I suggest you learn
the difference between `syntax' (sentence structure) and `lexicon' (vocabulary).
Second, I suggest you consider that Bugzilla's keyword system is only a
few years old, is poorly documented (the definitions for several of the
keywords are pretty meaningless), and is used by a poorly-connected
group of widely varying levels of experience. And while it is
technically possible for it to have syntax (since the list of keywords
for a bug is an ordered list, not an unordered one), this isn't
obviously the case, and I've never seen anyone try to use any.
Therefore, I suggest the most effective solution currently is for the
keyword system to be a pidgin, with no syntax and with a very small
lexicon to make it as easy as possible for new contributors to learn.
After 30 or 40 years -- once the Mozilla Project has thousands of
contributors and we aren't too fussed about attracting new ones --
*then* perhaps we can start turning the pidgin into a creole by adding
more keywords, and perhaps even a touch of syntax.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mozilla.org/>
