Test procedure for validating the PreBabel

Day seven --

Question -- from "jal" -- quote from "sangi39" --I think if he has done what I think he's done, he is very very culturally biased, since even though the chinese character for say "wealth" consists of the basic characters "house", "one/heaven", "mouth/gate", "upright/proud" and "ten", this doesn't mean the Chinese people themselves construct the idea of "wealth" in such a way or that the English speakers of the word do either. -- end quote.

Exactly. He kind of reverse-engineered the Chinese script, and found it very nifty, and based a "universal" language on it. Pretty weird.

Answer -- My heart is not biased of any kind. If you say that the PB roots are Culturally biased at this point, you are 100% correct, as they are 100% Chinese ideographs. Perhaps, one day I will change it into a set more culturally neutral symbols, but it will take some efforts to constructed them. At this moment, I do need them to be Chinese ideographs. With this said, if you still view the PB set which is culturally biased, then so be it, and I accept that.

"The reverse-engineered the Chinese script" is, again, exactly correct, 100% correct. That is, this PB set is not whipped up out of the blue, it is 100% based on Chinese traditional character system. In fact, I made this point very clear many times over in my previous posts. I don't know that what the sudden surprise about it is now.

According to the "uniqueness theorem", I can simply change the PB set with 240 English Phonemes without truly change the essence of it. Yet, at this point, I need the PB set stay as it is for a precise reason. In a previous post, I made three criteria for a universal language. 1. Instead of trying to replace the vocabulary of natural languages with a constructed vocabulary set as the formal language school tried, the true universal language must possess the ability and the capacity to unify and to encompass all vocabulary sets of all natural languages. 2. As a second language, it must be 10 times or more easier to learn than any natural language as a second language. 3. By learning it first, a person can learn a natural language as a second language much easier than a person who did not learn that universal language first.

Each criterion must be testable. That is, there is no point of arguing with a big tongue in cheek. With the PB set as it is now, we can test the criterion ii and iii right now with the following steps. Step 1: Encodes a language with PB set. The Chinese traditional character set is, now, 100% encoded with the PB set. Note: The Chinese traditional character set is, in fact, encoded with 220 roots and 50 variants of those roots. That is, that set has a total of 270. For the PB set, all those variant roots are not included, and a few (about 10) which are very much culturally oriented are also not included. That is, the PB set contains about 210 the original Chinese root words. 210/270 = 78%

Step 2: Find a person (Mr./Ms. A) who knows not a single Chinese character at this point and teach him the PB set without any connection to the Chinese language. Yet, he must remember the entire PB set, front to back, and back to front a few times over.

Step 3. Find a person (Mr./Ms. B) who is, now, able to read the current Chinese newspaper.

Step 4. Having a contest between the two persons with the following procedure: On a current Chinese newspaper, arbitrary select a word (character) and ask both persons three questions. 1. Is that character a blob? or it has some internal structure? That is, can that character be dissected into smaller parts? As the PB set is only "78%" of the proper Chinese set listed in my book "Chinese Etymology", Mr A who knows not a single Chinese word should get 70% correct answer. 2. What is the meaning of that character? Obviously, Mr. B should do much better on this question as he is already able to read Chinese newspaper. 3. With that meaning, why that character is written as it is, not otherwise. On this question, I will bet that Mr. A will do better.

This is a very simply test and can be done in a family setting if you have a Chinese neighbor.

I did this test many times over, and I was right every time. Of course, you don't have to take my words for it. Yet, if you do not do a test yourself and simply want to argue with tongue in cheek, I won't answer those kind of argument any more. If you can prove me wrong, I will, of course, want to analyze your test.

With this simple test, we can validate or invalidate the criteria ii and iii. When both are validated for the PB set, PB is ready for a new test, the universal language test.

In general, it takes 5 to 6 years for a native Chinese or Taiwanese to learn the Mandarin since birth at home and 4 to 5 "school" years to get the ability to read Chinese newspaper, that is, about a good 10 year learning on that language. Yet, in my book "Chinese Etymology", I guaranteed that for any person (12 years or older) who knows not a single Chinese word (character) at the beginning can read the current Chinese newspaper after study (in a true effort) with my method for 300 hours (3 hours a day for 100 days). I do have many successful stories. In fact, if you are the one who knows not a single Chinese word (or know very little) at this point, you yourself will be a good candidate for this test. Of course, if you are not interested in facts, it is your right to be so 100%, and I will respect that.

Signature -- PreBabel is the true universal language, it is available at http://www.prebabel.info