Re: Better Communication of Ideas

["sshiskom" <mathmaniac@hanmail.net>]

On "better" language.

I'm confused. Leo says languages can be made simpler, more regular,
more systematic. And then he asks if they can be made "better".
Isn't being simpler, more regular, more systematic, a good thing?
What does he mean by "better" here?

For example, wouldn't you agree that Lojban number system is
"better" than French one? 78 is {zebi} in Lojban, and soixante-
dix-huit(60+10+8) in French. Isn't Lojban more clear and reflects
decimal system better?

But my understanding is that you are looking for "more capability",
i.e. things that can be expressed in artlangs, and not in natlangs.
I doubt if such things exist at all. In my opinion, all languages
are more or less equal in their capability, as most of computer
languages are all Turing-complete and thus being equal in their
capability.

And that is not the correct way of comparison.

Sometimes someone asks in (say) Perl newsgroup that what can he
do in Perl that he cannot do in C++. Someone replies there's no
such thing, and explains Turing-completeness briefly. This is
a correct answer, but not an appropriate one. It's like answering
on the phone, to the question "What are you doing now", "I'm now
talking to you on the phone".

You can do web programming in Mathematica and symbolic math
in PHP -- they are both Turing-complete. But wouldn't you agree
that Mathematica is better for symbolic mathe and PHP for web
programming?

You said that "exclude size of vocabulary". That sounds a lot
like "please compare these computer languages, in syntax only,
ignoring library richness". I doubt value of such comparison.

I will write some features of Lojban that I see being superior
to many natlangs, in the next message.

mi'e sanxiyn.