hyper-correct graphic design

[gfish]

Last night I was walking by the Apple store in Oakridge Mall, and I noticed the pair of very prominent Rutherford-style atomic symbols glowing above the "Genius Bar". And it struck me as very ironic, that they would use a fundamentally incorrect model of the atom to symbolize genius.

"Ha ha", I said, "Isn't Apple silly?"

But that got me thinking -- why do we still use the Rutherford model symbol everywhere? Why haven't we come up with an iconic representation of electron orbitals? Surely a truly advanced civilization would be more correct in its iconography. (Yes, I'm still waiting for everyone to learn a sensible conlang, too.) If I was rich, I would totally fund an institute to work on improving this state of affairs.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

What do you think is most important in a sensible conlang? First language acquisition? Second language acquisition? Mutual-intelligibility with non-conlangs? I presume you mean sensible as opposed to deliberately constrained or non-serious conlangs, but if you have any thoughts on what's most important, I'd be curious to hear them.

(I've seen a few TV shows take a stab at some ~advanced alien species~ which uses a better form for the periodic table. Some of them were clever, but all looked kind of dumb to me, though that effect could have been primarily due to their unfamiliarity, and such things have more value in being familiar and well-understood and quickly-recognized than in being ideal, I suppose.)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Well, I originally wrote "Esperanto", but then I feared the comments would devolve in Ido vs. Esperanto vs. Interlingua. So I switched it to "conlang", but then I feared we'd get stuck in jokes about Klingon.

My main concern with a global conlang would be internal regularity/ease of learning. Regular grammar, regular spelling. Given a truly global scope, trying to make it intuitive to everyone is a lost cause. To learn from the (really very minor, considering) mistakes Esperanto made, I'd make sure to add: no diacriticals, and don't gender-tag words, or at least make neuter the default interpretation.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Is "no diacriticals" generalizable to having a clear writing system where each grapheme is distinct and simple and not modifiable, or do you think that a conlang with a writing system like Arabic or Hebrew or Hanzi might be workable? Any feelings on Hangul? It's at least more regular and logical than most writing systems.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Well, mostly I just meant that anything other than simple Latin is a pain in the ass. Using a syllabary might be a good idea, since that does seem to be the absolute human standard with the weird exception of the Phoenicians and the historical quirk that Europe borrowed from them. I've always heard good things about Hangul, but I've never gotten around to learning it.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Hm, I don't think "absolute human standard with the weird exception of the Phoenicians" is really all that meaningful given that the vast majority of writing systems are descended from Phoenician. Most of the world's population uses those, too. In terms of all of human history, I don't know. I like syllabaries, but I can't think of that many examples that have a really large number of users outside China and, if you want to count abugidas, India.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Not if you're going by number of (modern) users, no. Obviously alphabets rule, by that metric. But to the best of my knowledge -- and I'm a pretty big lexicographic nerd -- literally every other writing system not directly descended from the Phoenecians has been a syllabary (or a syllabary plus ideograms).

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Some of those syllabaries have been turned into abjads and alphabets over the years, though, and some modern constructed writing systems take inspiration from the Latin alphabet to form syllabaries. I'm not sure that the set of things in the state they were in when first invented, excluding their descendants, is a good way to divine a meaningful absolute human standard. I'd love to have a timeline showing the writing systems in use and their lineage, colored by type, and scaled by number of users.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Though, with China and India solidly on the syllabary/ideogram side of things, I'm not sure alphabets have the majority...

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Depends how you measure people who know more than one. A large percentage of people in China know the English alphabet, there are sizable minorities who use other abjads and alphabets. The majority of India knows the English alphabet, and many use other abjads and alphabets alongside an abugida.