All human languages, all humans, all human sounds, a universal table, a slowly emerging set of sounds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tpAANSGN2o
My Comment: All human languages, all humans, all human sounds, a universal table, a slowly emerging set of sounds
On the Internet a good site would handle spoken and written communication with users in about 200 or 300 widely used languages. No one does that. Then if you ask “How many human languages are there?” the answer comes back “about 7000”, and the subtext “some languages are only spoken” and “some dialects are difficult for people to understand each other”. That is just spoken languages. When you get to written languages, I would say there are certainly “millions”. And, for certain situations, 8.2 Billion (the number of humans). But “millions” comes up because many of the “domain specific languages” like “physics” or “biochemistry” or “weaving” or “water treatment” or “rocket engine design” or “how to use Python” are mostly incompatible.
I have to deal with all of these for the Internet Foundation. Including videos about things, audio about things, and “things” which are in the real world like cars, paintings, clothing, books, ancient temple, isotopes, many kinds of animals, minerals, particles, energies, units, dimensions”. Every language ends up on the Internet, is only a mention. You are adding to that trying to understand and classify and examine kinds of language. I almost forgot. Now there are “plant languages” “tree languages” “elephant languages” “ant languages” as almost every living system has many independent entities which communicate. Human nerve cells and organs and individual muscles and sensors communicate by chemical ion flows and by chemicals flows. Since individual cells now can be DNA mapped, two cells have a complex interaction. When you know the language of cells in an organism, somewhat they are easier to understand. That seems to be because we label things that show up enough to be “many” and then we give them a name, then we make note and say things like “name1” “name2” “name3”, “apple is red”.
My problem right now (I have tens of thousands of things to do) is that these AI companies are making so called “intelligent computers” or “AIs” where they do NOT support any human or domain specific language well. Because they chew up the free text from the Internet, make arbitrary tokens, look for patterns in the token and can regurgitate reasonable sounding sentences in many languages – with no global open verifiable way to find the referents – the meanings of the words. They can point you to more words, but not the things themselves, and worse they won’t cite their sources, nor tell you how they arrive at what they recommend or say.
I think the whole world, all language groups could store all knowledge and have a way for all humans to refer unambiguously. Imagine a table with all words and phrases in Tamil, all things events and ideas which all users of Tamil might encounter. The whole of “Tamil” knowledge. I tend to put emphasis on priorities and usage. Then “the whole of “Chinese”, “the whole of Spanish”, and so forth. Then imagine every item in Tamil written down along with the sounds that are possible. and line that up with Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and so forth. Don’t worry if “my computer is not big enough” or “I do not know how to do that – yet”.
In the table there is a code for “the sun” and it will be in every language most likely. “water”, “air”, “human” and so forth. Now that sounds of all humans are there. If you allow, your voice can be translated to core codes in the universal language and your personal computer learn you nearly perfectly over your life time. And the sounds of all speakers in all languages, can, over time be simplified without losing the originals and slowly a standard set of “all human sounds” and “all human sounds connected to written languages” and “all human sounds connected to singing” and “all sounds that occur” can be compiled. It is just hardware, software, some humans, some algorithms, some time.
I am fairly certain it will happen. I have been thinking, studying, researching, calculating, experimenting, trying to understand for about 58 years now. The last 26 years full time for the Internet Foundation. King Sejong the Great had Hangul created so that the basic sounds of spoken language could be written. In a short time most people could learn the sounds for a fixed number of symbols and then convert them to sounds of words, and they could take their own sounds and write them down. Essentially the same thing can happen with all 8.2 Billion humans (yes I know there are exceptions and situations) for all languages they might speak. It is just data and there seems to be an infinite future to work it out.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
