An assessment of the Unicode standard

[Tom Morris]

Are you telling us people using a language that does not have a word
for window somehow cannot comprehend what a window is, are you mad
man? Words are simply text attributes attached to objects. the text
attribute doesn't change the object in any way. just think of is
__repr__

Err, no, it's a bit more complicated than that. Words map to material
objects, to concepts, abstracta, sets, relations, states of affairs, to
mental states, to different senses of the same object. What object is
the word "bachelor" attached to? And why is it that suddenly the label -
that's all it is, after all - stops being applicable after a person gets
married.

To use the classic example: "The Morning Star is the Evening Star." The
object is the same - Venus. But the sense in which the words are used
are different: you wouldn't say "that's the Evening Star!" in the
morning. If words are just dumb strings attached to objects, then
someone saying "The Morning Star is the Evening Star" is saying no more
than "a = a".

Your review of the Unicode standard is utterly naïve. There fact is that
even if everyone we could wave a magic wand and ensure that everyone on
the planet spoke the same language - English, for the sake of argument -
that would not negate the need for using other character sets. A
historian wants to typeset a book on ancient Greek civilization, where
Greek characters are used interchangably with English characters. Here,
having a uniform character set for all characters that one might
feasibly want to use from all known civilizations from throughout
history that it is practical to represent is superbly useful. Other
areas of life use their own symbols, many of which are present in the
Unicode specification including mathematical symbols, logic symbols,
musical notes, IPA phonetic symbols, currency symbols, chess and playing
card symbols, dingbats and much more. For basic typesetting, the Unicode
standard also contains a variety of spaces, dashes and other
typographical components which are not represented in Latin-1.

The fact is that every language with characters in the Unicode standard
generally have a large body of literature behind them - not necessarily
literature like Shakespeare, but things which tell the story of a
culture. How would you digitise those for search and study? Without the
characters to represent those languages, you could say that it would be
ideal to just translate them into the global language. Great. Do you
trust the translators to do the job once and forever? Take any ancient
text which still has relevance today for religion or culture or
philosophy, and you'll find that anyone who *really* wants to understand
it goes back to the original text in the original language. I'd really
love to have some excellent language-to-language compilers that could,
say, turn Ruby into Python into Java into C and vice versa. And do so
reliably. Where are they? Show me perfect machine translation and then
we can maybe stop bothering about other languages.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_Mathematical_Operators

 

[alex23]

By the way, at the moment I am thinking of a sort of purple
blob-shaped monster with tentacles and fangs, that my language doesn't
have a word for and that I have never seen. On your theory, how come I
am thinking about it?

Because Great Cthulhu is finally Awakening?

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

To use the classic example: "The Morning Star is the Evening Star." The
object is the same - Venus. But the sense in which the words are used
are different: you wouldn't say "that's the Evening Star!" in the
morning. If words are just dumb strings attached to objects, then
someone saying "The Morning Star is the Evening Star" is saying no more
than "a = a".

Granted, a proper version would use a class where the two Venus
objects have a different description...
.... commonDesc = "the second planet from the sun"
.... def __init__(self, desc):
.... self.desc = desc
.... def __str__(self):
.... return self.commonDesc + " " + self.desc
....

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

By the way, at the moment I am thinking of a sort of purple
blob-shaped monster with tentacles and fangs, that my language doesn't
have a word for and that I have never seen. On your theory, how come I
am thinking about it?

A one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater?

{Which brings up the confusing question... Is the eater purple, or does
it eat purple people (which is why it is so rare... it only eats people
caught in the last stages of suffocation <G>)}

 

[alex23]

        Granted, a proper version would use a class where the two Venus
objects have a different description...

I think I'd be more inclined to model Venus and treat the others as
views

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

There are good reasons for it falling out of favour, though. At the
time of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, anthropologists were arguing that
members of a certain remote tribe did not experience grief on the
death of a child because their language did not have a word for grief.
They showed all the *signs* of grief -- weeping and wailing and so on
-- and sometimes used metaphors ("I feel as if my inside is being
crushed"). But because of the conviction at the time that "if your
language does not have a word for something, and you have never seen
that object, then you "__cannot__" think about it" the anthropologists
were convinced that this just looked and sounded like grief and wasn't
actually grief.

This is kind of convincing, when applied to an emotion like that. The whole
thing is obviously a lot more complicated than the position I have taken
here - if it weren't, then there would be no way for a language to change
and grow, if it were literally true that you cannot think of something that
you have no word for.

By the way, at the moment I am thinking of a sort of purple
blob-shaped monster with tentacles and fangs, that my language doesn't
have a word for and that I have never seen. On your theory, how come I
am thinking about it?

I do not really believe you are thinking about a purple people eater. - you
must be mistaken.



- Hendrik

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

A one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater?

{Which brings up the confusing question... Is the eater purple, or does
it eat purple people (which is why it is so rare... it only eats people
caught in the last stages of suffocation <G>)}

Snap (sort of).
Does anybody know where the concept of the purple people eater comes from?
I mean is there a children's book or something?

- Hendrik

 

[Mel]

A one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater?

{Which brings up the confusing question... Is the eater purple, or does
it eat purple people (which is why it is so rare... it only eats people
caught in the last stages of suffocation <G>)}

Since we're spending so much time -- from the text (with Pythonic nested
quotes

'''I said "Tell me Mister People Eater, what's your line?"
He said "Eatin' purple people, and it sure is fine."'''


Mel.

 

[David Robinow]

Does anybody know where the concept of the purple people eater comes from?
I mean is there a children's book or something?
- Hendrik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_People_Eater

 

[Cousin Stanley]

Snap (sort of).
Does anybody know where the concept of the purple people eater comes from?
I mean is there a children's book or something?

- Hendrik

Shep Wooley ( 1958 )

 

[r]

On Friday 18 September 2009 06:39:57 Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
(snip)

Snap (sort of).
Does anybody know where the concept of the purple people eater comes
from?
I mean is there a children's book or something?
- Hendrik

Where is the one eyed, one horned, lavender (antiquated) language
eater i ask! He would be a friend of mine for sure ;-)

 

[greg]

there would be no way for a language to change
and grow, if it were literally true that you cannot think of something that
you have no word for.

From my own experience, I know that it's possible for me to
think about things that I don't have a word for. An example
occured once when I was developing a 3D game engine, and
I was trying to think of a name for the thing that exists
where two convex polyhedra share a face, except that the
face is missing (it's hard to explain even using multiple
words).

I couldn't think of any word that fully expressed the precise
concept I had in mind. Yet I was clearly capable of thinking
about it, otherwise I wouldn't have noticed that I was missing
a word!

So in my humble opinion, the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is bunk.

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

From my own experience, I know that it's possible for me to
think about things that I don't have a word for. An example
occured once when I was developing a 3D game engine, and
I was trying to think of a name for the thing that exists
where two convex polyhedra share a face, except that the
face is missing (it's hard to explain even using multiple
words).

Yikes! If I follow you, it is a bit like having a hollow dumb-bell with a
hollow handle of zero length, and wanting a word for that opening between the
knobs. I do not think that you are likely to find a word in *any* language
for that - I would posit that it is too seldom encountered to deserve one.

What does a concave polyhedrum look like? *weg*

I couldn't think of any word that fully expressed the precise
concept I had in mind. Yet I was clearly capable of thinking
about it, otherwise I wouldn't have noticed that I was missing
a word!

So in my humble opinion, the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is bunk.

That is probably true, but on the other hand, it is not totally rubbish
either, as it is hard to think of stuff you have never heard of, whether you
have an undefined word for it or not.

- Hendrik

 

[Terry Reedy]

So in my humble opinion, the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is bunk.

It also seems not to have been their hypothesis ;-). from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

"Since neither Sapir nor Whorf had ever stated an actual hypothesis,
Lenneberg formulated one based on a condensation of the different
expressions of the notion of linguistic relativity in their works. He
found it necessary to formulate the hypothesis as two basic formulations
which he called the "weak" and the "strong" formulation respectively:

1. Structural differences between language systems will, in
general, be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences, of an
unspecified sort, in the native speakers of the language.
2. The structure of anyone's native language strongly influences or
fully determines the worldview he will acquire as he learns the
language.[14]

Since Lenneberg believed that the objective reality denotated by
language was the same for speakers of all language he decided to test
how different languages codified the same message differently and
whether differences in codification could be proven to affect their
behaviour."
...."Lenneberg's two formulations of the hypothesis became widely known
and attributed to Whorf and Sapir while in fact the second formulation,
verging on linguistic determinism, was never advanced by either of them."

In other words, the 'Strong' form is a strawman erected by someone
somewhat opposed to their ideas.

tjr

 

[r]

 From my own experience, I know that it's possible for me to
think about things that I don't have a word for. An example
occured once when I was developing a 3D game engine, and
I was trying to think of a name for the thing that exists
where two convex polyhedra share a face, except that the
face is missing (it's hard to explain even using multiple
words).

I couldn't think of any word that fully expressed the precise
concept I had in mind. Yet I was clearly capable of thinking
about it, otherwise I wouldn't have noticed that I was missing
a word!

So in my humble opinion, the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is bunk.

You have a good point here Greg!

The break down in communication is a result of verbal language. What
is verbal language? It *is* simply a way to reconstruct electrical
signals from the "senders" brain to the "receivers" brain, that's it!
One can easily grasp very complicated ideas (even abstract ideas) in
ones mind in the flash of a nano second! However, reconstucting those
same electrical signals and synapses in the mind of another human by
means of *fancy* grunts-and-groans, is sometimes an exercise in
asininity!

You can think of natural language as exporting the state of "program"
to file so "program2" can parse the file and re-create the state of
"program1" within itself -- very inefficient and very, very ugly!

All the "hailer's" of languages who make claims of natural language's
beauty and elegance should give some real thought to the problems of
human communication! Natural language is kludgy at best, and will
NEVER be an elegant system!

Hopefully i have help to successfully reconstruct this concept in your
brain...?

 

[Greg Ewing]

Yikes! If I follow you, it is a bit like having a hollow dumb-bell with a
hollow handle of zero length, and wanting a word for that opening between the
knobs.

That's pretty much it, yes. Although "opening" doesn't
quite cut it, because there can be two of them sharing
an edge with no physical substance in between, yet
they are two distinct entities rather than a single
opening.

I do not think that you are likely to find a word in *any* language
for that

Probably not in any everyday language, no. It's a fairly
abstract concept. But programming has a way of taking
abstract concepts and turning them into concrete ones.
I had this object in my data structure, and I needed a
name for it.

In any case, it doesn't affect my point, which was that
I was thinking about something that I didn't have a word,
or even a convenient phrase for.

That is probably true, but on the other hand, it is not totally rubbish
either, as it is hard to think of stuff you have never heard of, whether you
have an undefined word for it or not.

I quite agree that there is *some* interaction between
the language we use and the way we think, but it's a
two-way process. As a species, we're quite capable of
thinking about new things and inventing words to express
them when the need arises.

It's possible that some individuals do this more
frequently than others, e.g. mathematicians and other
people who are in the habit of exploring new ideas may
be less influenced by the constraints of language
than the general population.

 

[Tim Rowe]

Snap (sort of).
Does anybody know where the concept of the purple people eater comes
from?
I mean is there a children's book or something?
- Hendrik

I've always assumed it to go back to the 1958 Sheb Wooley song. Which
I remember, although I was only 3 when it was released.

 

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:33:47 -0300, Greg Ewing

Hendrik van Rooyen wrote:

In any case, it doesn't affect my point, which was that
I was thinking about something that I didn't have a word,
or even a convenient phrase for.


I quite agree that there is *some* interaction between
the language we use and the way we think, but it's a
two-way process. As a species, we're quite capable of
thinking about new things and inventing words to express
them when the need arises.

It's possible that some individuals do this more
frequently than others, e.g. mathematicians and other
people who are in the habit of exploring new ideas may
be less influenced by the constraints of language
than the general population.

Anyway, they're still constrained by the language.

In ancient Greece many wise men made remarkable progress in geometry,
arithmetic, and other areas - but could not develop algebra. Why not?
Algebra requires abstract names for unknowns - x,y,z that we use today.
The greek number system used letters to represent numbers themselves -
α=1, β=2, etc. - so no one would think on using letters for designating
unknown quantities; it was just out of their mental frame.

Diophantus created some kind of algebra notation, so he was able to write
x**n (for 2<=n<=6, basically combining the expressions for x² and x³) and
could express some equations in short (or abridged) form, instead of the
full prose that were used normally. But he was simply not able to develop
symbolic algebra. And nothing happened for 15 centuries in this regard in
Europe.

The Arabians brought the Indian number system (and the idea of zero as a
number) to Europe. And it's not a coincidence that Arabians also developed
symbolic Algebra at the same time [2]; they *could* develop Algebra
because they had a language into which symbolic names could be expressed.

[1] Colerus, Egmont. Historia de la Matemática. De Pitágoras a Hilbert.
Bs. As, Ediciones Progreso y Cultura, 1943

[2] BTW, the very name 'algebra' comes from a book of Abu Ja'far Muhammad
ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, "al-jabr w'al-muqabala". And guess where
'algorithm' comes from?

 

[Emile van Sebille]

On 9/19/2009 11:33 PM Greg Ewing said...

It's possible that some individuals do this more
frequently than others, e.g. mathematicians and other
people who are in the habit of exploring new ideas may
be less influenced by the constraints of language
than the general population.

As I recall Shakespeare (to use one of his many spellings) is one of the
largest contributers of new words to the English language...

Emile

 

[Emile van Sebille]

On 9/19/2009 11:33 PM Greg Ewing said...

It's possible that some individuals do this more
frequently than others, e.g. mathematicians and other
people who are in the habit of exploring new ideas may
be less influenced by the constraints of language
than the general population.

As I recall Shakespeare (to use one of his many spellings) is one of the
largest contributers of new words to the English language...

Emile