In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [15]
His idea wasn't as original as he thought. Quite a few scholars of the time had become preoccupied with developing a “real character.” This was the term used by the philosopher Francis Bacon to describe Chinese writing—it was “real” in that the symbols represented not sounds, or words, but ideas. Traveling missionaries of the previous century had noted that people who spoke mutually incomprehensible languages—Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese—could understand each other in writing. They got the impression that Chinese characters by-passed language entirely, and went right to the heart of the matter. This impression was mistaken (we will discuss how Chinese characters do work in chapter 15), but it encouraged a general optimistic excitement about the possibility of a universal real character.
Dalgarno was a nobody in Oxford, but it so happened that the only person he knew there, an old school friend, was in good with the vice-chancellor of the university. Dalgarno's work was read and passed around, and soon he found himself in the company of the most eminent scholars in town, a stroke of luck at which he was “overjoyed.” One of these scholars was Wilkins, who had not yet begun to work on his own universal character.
Dalgarno's system provided a list of 935 “radicals”—the primitive concepts he judged necessary for effective communication— and a method for writing them. They were not, however, organized into a hierarchical tree. They were not grouped by shared properties, or by any logical or philosophical system. Instead, they were placed into a verse composed of stanzas of seven lines each, so that they could be easily memorized. For example, if you memorize the first stanza, you know the placement of forty-two of his radical words (italicized):
When I sit-down upon a hie place, I'm sick with light and heat
For the many thick moistures, doe open wide my Emptie pores
But when sit upon a strong borrowed Horse, I ride and run most swiftly
Therefore if I can purchase this courtesie with civilitie, I care not thehirers barbaritie
Because I'm perswaded they are wild villains, scornfully deceiving modest men
Neverthelesse I allowe their frequent wrongs and will encourage them with obliging exhortations
Moreover I'l assist them to fight against robbers, when I have my long crooked sword.
He developed a written character where the placement and direction of little lines and hooks referred to a specific place in a line of a stanza (as shown in figure 5.4).
To write “light,” for example, you draw the character representing the first stanza modified by a small mark indicating first line, fifth word. The pattern is repeated for the fourth through sixth lines, but with little hooks added to the marks, and for the seventh line the mark is drawn through the character (as shown in figure 5.5).
Figure 5.4: Dalgarno's system
Additionally, the opposite of a word was represented by reversing the orientation of the stanza symbol.
He also provided for a way for the system to be spoken by assigning consonants and vowels to the numbered stanzas, lines, and words. So if B = stanza 1, A = line 1, and G = word 5, then the word for “light” would be BAG.
Figure 5.5: Dalgarno's system, lines 4–7
Wilkins admired Dalgarno's system, but he thought it needed to include more concepts, and took it upon himself to draw up an ordered table of plants, animals, and minerals. Dalgarno respectfully declined to use those tables, arguing that the longer the list of concepts got, the harder they would be to memorize. He thought that specific species, like elephant, didn't need their own, separate radical words, but that they could be referred to by writing out compound phrases, such as “largest whole-footed beast.”
Dalgarno's method was another way to get a mathematics of language. No need to determine a universe of categories and distinguishing features—you simply decide what