https://twitter.com/inversebrah/status/1779367565942468871

I would challenge the premise: English is "the BTC of languages" in some ways (mainly: network effect), but not others.

I think the best candidate for "the BTC of languages" in spirit and design philosophy is toki pona.

A vocabulary so small it can fit onto a single poster.

And yet, it's very difficult to use it to actually express non-trivial things.

product designer • exploring better ways to live: health, wealth, identity, states and more • bento.me/mxd

fascinating how on web/any digital interface we’ve got our own universal icon set / language that each of us learned and understands, making it a universal global language in a way?

And different styles of those icons are like different typefaces we’re used to seeing 🤯 

Haven’t thought about it this way.

Yes, pretty much all written language is either a representation of sounds (alphabet/syllabary) or a representation of meaning (icons)?

(Or sometimes both, like how Chinese characters often have one component representing approximate pronunciation and another representing meaning category)