Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
What living language is the most protocolized? As in most completely described by its rules, with the fewest unsystematic exceptions? I’m guessing French
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Eric Platon
@ic
French is formalised and enforced by the Académie française—a relatively small set of people who basically what is French. Words do follow rules, and language evolution is slow, from stable state to stable state. Like it took to decade to settle on mél and courriel for email. Explicit old fashion protocol? English gets neologism on the fly, following rules closer to the meme and the gene. It does look like an implicit protocol.
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Eric Platon
@ic
Japanese has like 400 phonemes, compared to like 40K for English—so very few sounds. Yet there is as complex communications in Japan than any other country. However social protocols are quite complex. An easy way to know who is powerful or more senior is often terseness: Politeness can quadruple the length of what you say, and powerful people can be concise (not that simple, it depends who speaks to whom). Like: “it is” “Da” “Desu” “Degozaimasu” Protocols in the air on a somewhat fixed language (many imports now from outside). Not like English protocolised live evolution, nor French protocolised formality.
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