Measuring a writing system "economy"/"accuracy"

From: Eric Muller (emuller@adobe.com)
Date: Tue Jun 28 2005 - 22:51:43 CDT

  • Next message: David Starner: "Re: Measuring a writing system "economy"/"accuracy""

    This is a very naive question, but anyway:

    Has there been attempts to measure the "economy"/"accuracy" of writing
    systems? If so, what measures have been used? And what are the results?

    I suppose that IPA could be described as an efficient and accurate
    writing system for any language, if one consider only the signs needed
    to write a particular language. This suggests to measure the "distance
    to IPA": take a long enough spoken text in some language, write in the
    usual writing system for that language, write the same text in IPA, and
    compare the two written forms: the more there is a sign for sign
    equivalence, the more efficient/accurate the writing system is. I
    realize that there are different ways to write the same spoken text in
    IPA, but I suppose that one can more or less standardize on some form.

    I also realize that more economical / accurate does not mean better.

    Thanks,
    Eric.



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