Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[George Foot <george.foot@MERTON.OXFORD.AC.UK>]

On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote:

> After a bit of thought on the matter, George, I've decided that this isn't
> really an appropriate analogy. The reason that Dvorak is easier to learn
> after qwerty than qwerty is to learn after Dvorak is that Dvorak is MORE
> INTUITIVE than qwerty, not necessarily more logical. The only way in which

I'm not sure I follow what you mean by `intuitive'; surely this concept
depends upon what has been learned before? Or do you think some things
(like crawling and walking perhaps) are truly intuitive? If so, I'm not
sure I'd agree that a language can be intuitive in the same manner.
The ability to speak takes a long time to develop; I'm not sure that any
(spoken) language can be classed as intuitive in the same way that walking
is intuitive. Perhaps the language of our thoughts is, though...

> it is more logical than qwerty is that it is designed to make it easier to
> type the letters that are more common NATURALLY in English. By contrast,
> Lojban is decidedly UN-intuitive and UN-natural. Terminators aren't
> natural, a grammar based on predicate calculus is most decidedly
> unnatural, and there seems no rhyme or reason to which sumti places take

I think I contest the above; perhaps terminators aren't natural because
English doesn't use them, the formalised grammer and its roots aren't
natural because English shares neither the level of formality nor the
derivation? Presumably the grammer seemed natural to those who created it,
and to others familiar with predicate calculus (with which I am not
familiar).

> an abstraction, and which take a concrete, as Mark Vines pointed out. If
> you were going to look for a keyboard that was the analagous equivalent of
> Lojban, I would say that it would be a keyboard with all of the keys in
> alphabetical order - I understand the original typewriter keyboards
> actually used this layout. Whereas, if you were looking for a linguistic
> analogue to a Dvorak keyboard, then probably something like Interlingua
> would be the go, which was designed so that all the most familiar words
> for a speaker of a European language were presented in Interlingua in
> their most universally recognisable forms.

Meaning that Interlingua is intuitive to one who has previously learned
one or many European languages? Presumably, though, it would be no more
intuitive to a first-time speaker... or would it?

> This is to say that Lojban is logical but A PRIORI, whereas Dvorak is
> logical but A POSTERIORI. Analagously, the original typewriter keyboards
> were also logical and a priori, and Interlingua is logical and a
> posteriori.

I see your point:


Level 1: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both communicate the user's
desires to the computer/typewriter by way of pressing on an array of keys.
Lojban and other languages both communicate the speaker's desires by way
of either written/typed symbols or vocal sounds.

Level 2: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both generate one character per
keypress, in general, i.e. the output is formed from the keys you press in
the order they are pressed, one character per keypress. Lojban differs,
though, from English in the way phrases are formed. I can't speak for
other languages really.

Level 3: The Dvorak keyboard generates different symbols, in general, for
each keypress to those the QWERTY keyboard would generate. Lojban uses a
different vocabulary, in general, to English.


So the keyboards differ at level two, whereas the languages differ at
level 3. An analagous comparison to that between English and Lojban, then,
would be the one-handed keyboards which involve pressing several keys at
once to generate a letter or word? I don't agree that an alphabetical
keyboard is any better an analogy than a Dvorak keyboard, though.


--
Regards,

george.foot@merton.oxford.ac.uk