And yet another
interesting variation on language. Herein it is postulated that all spoken human languages are made up from a small subset of sounds combined into different variations. The article goes on to describe a language where each word has a whole, and completely different, sound. An auditory complement to an ideographic written language.
The human vocal apparatus can only produce some 60 discrete sounds, and only about 50 of them have significant audibility.
F in the following refers to an unspecified frequency. The following are general musical "truths"... §
Most people can hear a pitch difference of about F:F*2^(1/24) (F:F*1.0293).
Many people cannot meaningfully tell the difference between F and 2F, and if F, 2F, and 4F notes are sounding, they'll only be able to discern 4F and one of the others. (this is foundational for all known musical systems, and is due to the law of harmonics.)
Western musical systems all approximate a system of 12 discrete "half-steps"...
| halfsteps | Frequency | Interval | Solfege, Major | Solfege, Minor |
| 0 | F * 2^(0/12) | Tonic | Do | La |
| 1 | F * 2^(1/12) | m2 | | |
| 2 | F * 2^(2/12) | M2 | Re | Ti |
| 3 | F * 2^(3/12) | m3 | | Do |
| 4 | F * 2^(4/12) | M3 | Mi | |
| 5 | F * 2^(5/12) | P4 | Fa | Re |
| 6 | F * 2^(6/12) | A4 | | |
| 7 | F * 2^(7/12) | P5 | Sol | Mi |
| 8 | F * 2^(8/12) | m6 | | Fa |
| 9 | F * 2^(9/12) | M6 | La | |
| 10 | F * 2^(10/12) | m7 | | Sol |
| 11 | F * 2^(11/12) | M7 | Ti | |
| 12 | F * 2^(12/12) | Octave | Do | La |
The Major Mode uses a scale running Do to Do; Minor is La to La.
Most other scales also use the same 12 half steps, but not the same arrangement of 7 out of those 12 notes . Several (especially the semitic ones) use 9 of them. Several african ones use 5 of them. Some particularly noisome composers use 4...
And it cycles; each octave resets as tonic for the next. Thus a 2 octave range is from F to 4F (=F*2^(24/12)=F*2^2)
When using Solfege, it's common to indicate the second octave by affixing a single quote ('), and a 3rd by a double quote (").
Given this system, and noting that most people have a comfortable singing range comprising F to 2F... we can get from our 8 note scale 64 potentials... but we cannot use those 64, because the listener has no reference for where it's starting, and absolute pitch (the ability to hear a note and know what frequency F is for that purpose) is actually quite rare, while almost all can be trained to hear relative pitch easily.
So, we have to pick a reference note, and use it consistently in the same spot. Since I use church chant a lot, I'll note that it almost always ENDS on tonic... but that's not as linguistically useful as starting on tonic.
So, since we can pick any of the halfsteps in the person's comfortable range as our start, and the second has to be within that same comfortable range...we can get 15 combinations.
Unity: Do-Do
Rising Sequences: Do-Re, Do-Mi, Do-Fa, Do-Sol, Do-La, Do-Ti, Do-Do'
Falling Sequences: Do'-Ti, Do'-La, Do'-Sol, Do'-Fa, Do'-Mi, Do'-Re, Do'-Do
Adding a third note multiplies by more than 8 but less than fifteen...
Do'-Do'-(Do to Do") is 15
Do'-Re'-(Re to Do") is 14
Do'-Mi'-(Mi to Do") is 13
Do'-Fa'-(Fa to Do") is 12
Do'-Sol'-(Sol to Do") is 11
Do'-La'-(La to Do") is 10
Do'-Ti'-(Ti to Do") is 9
Do-Do'-(Do to Do') is 8
And the falling patterns mirror image the rising ones...
So the 3 note sequence is 169 patterns (=15 + 2*14 + 2*13 + 2*12 +2*11 +2*10 +2*9+2*8)
For simplicity of calculation (because I don't care to do that much figuring), additionals are a continuously falling multiple of greater than 8 but less than 15...
But once we get past 2 notes, we're already into discrete patterns.
However, if we use the full 12 halfsteps, we can get 23 meaningful combinations from our comfortable octave.
We also have 8 singable vowels (ă, ä, ā, ē, ĭ, ŭ, ō, er) and 2 singable consonants (m and n) ... so we can get 230 discrete sounds without repetitive elements.
That's not enough for non
for 10 singable sounds.
By using the 40-odd consonants as well, we can get about 9200 discrete sounds, packed into a 2-beat, audible and discernable sequence.
Inflection would then be by duration, rather than the European typical use of pitch.
9200 is plenty - tho' not nearly the number in the largest english dictionaries (which count around 1 million), it's as many as quite a few lower-vocabulary languages. And well more than the stable creole called Taki-Taki, at under 800...
If we instead allow our 10 singable sounds, and only 10 consonants, always leading, but three notes, of an 8 note scale, we can get 110*169=18,590 words... about comparable with a teenager native english speaker. Oh, and common daily use is only about 3000-5000 discrete words per day of a much larger vocabulary. (Typical US adults have a 25,000 to 30,000 word vocabulary, but use only 10% to 20% regularly)
If we add a trailing consonant...but never the same as the leading... that gives us 185,900 words. Which is pretty reasonable and awfully compact.
And would scream "SYNTHETIC LANGUAGE"...
§ Truths in quotes because, while generally true, many individuals have better than this level.
