1

A language employs some kind of alphabet for writing. One could naïvely expect that each letter bears the same amount of entropy. But in reality that is not the case. For example in English each letter has it own frequency and they are far from equal. Same is for many other languages.

Why is it that some letters are more frequent than others? I have found a question that is asking seemingly for a similar information, but the answers are concerning phonetics only, and not the actual written alphabet.

Is there any language or an alphabet, that treats each letter equally? Or nearly equally? Natural or constructed?

11
  • 5
    Why should one expect each letter to bear the same entropy? Nothing else in language has that kind of uniformity.
    – Colin Fine
    May 23, 2019 at 21:24
  • 1
    @PF4Public: one important point to realise is that letters (and writing) have little to do with the fundamentals of language. Writing is a technology that (until very recently) few languages, and few speakers of those languages, had; and can be applied to the same language in very different ways. Languages hardly ever do things with letters: they do things with sounds, and the letters used may or may not be changed in consequence.
    – Colin Fine
    May 24, 2019 at 16:00
  • 1
    @PF4Public, to your substantive point: hardly anything in language (or in a language) is consciously created or changed. Language changes because of the exigencies of communicative needs, social drives, etc. Except in very rare cases nobody argues that a language should be this or that way because of some property of the language as a whole - in fact usually nobody argues what a language should be, they just use it.
    – Colin Fine
    May 24, 2019 at 16:06
  • 1
    @PF4Public: There are sometimes cases where a change affects something across a range of the language - the Great Vowel Shift, and Grimm's Law are both cases - but what reason have you for thinking that there is any process which could affect the "entropy" in the way you're talking about it?
    – Colin Fine
    May 24, 2019 at 16:08
  • 1
    Low entropy != dispensable. In English, the letter e is the most frequent, so we can say it has the "least entropy". Now ask yourself: will English writing become better, if we purge the letter "e"?
    – jick
    May 24, 2019 at 22:14

0

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.