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Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

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Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#2
I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing.

I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#3
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Not everything has to be about programming.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#4
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Perl might have a lot of operators but Haskell's ability to define your own operators leads to a ton of operators in the standard library and third party packages.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#5
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

No, that crown would almost certainly go to one of the variants of APL, which have more operators than ASCII has symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#6
Coincidentally, I just now posted the below to my Facebook.

> Taa (or !Xoo) is one of the most phonetically complex languages in the world[0]. Here is a video[1] of a !Xoo speaker reading a paragraph of text in English, and then reading the translation of that same text in !Xoo. The number and variety of phonetic clicks is simply amazing.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrek3r29HvE

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#7
post #4
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Perl might have a lot of operators but Haskell's ability to define your own operators leads to a ton of operators in the standard library and third party packages.

That's one of the things keeping me away from Haskell. It seems that to be proficient I would need to know way more beyond the "standard library", but go into the String vs Text debates, and the huge amounts of common knowledge out there.

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#8
A long time ago I was interested in finding out what the intersection of all languages sounds would be, would it be an empty set or was there enough overlap that someone designing the next esperanto could build it using universal sounds thus allowing any human speaker to pronunciate it without difficulty. Turns out there is a good degree of overlap if you allow for a very small bit of fuzzyness. For instance, 'a','m', and 'p' are some of the most common sounds across all languages, which is also interesting when you realize "mama" and "papa" - with slight variations - display high universality in their pronunciation across all languages.

for more info see: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-common-phonemes-amon...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#9
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Interestingly, the same might be true with languages.

Quechua (from the Andean Mountains) only has three vowels (a, i, u). I can't find a reference, but AFAIK the main hypothesis was that a 3-vowel system made it easier to communicate across longer distances (i.e. across a canyon or valley in the Andes).

Re: Which Language Uses the Most Sounds?

#10
post #4
post #2

I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing. I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

Perl might have a lot of operators but Haskell's ability to define your own operators leads to a ton of operators in the standard library and third party packages.

So does Perl 6 (it may be because initial Perl 6 implementation was made in Haskell).
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