Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!sun!decwrl!hpscad.dec.com!verma From: verma@hpscad.dec.com (Virendra Verma, DTN 297-5510) Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.ai Subject: Re: Infinite alphabets - (Turing via Berke) Message-ID: <11900@decwrl.DEC.COM> Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 11:27:43 EDT Article-I.D.: decwrl.11900 Posted: Mon Oct 19 11:27:43 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 20-Oct-87 20:45:34 EDT Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 18 Xref: mnetor sci.lang:1592 comp.ai:930 In article tsmith@gryphon.CTS.COM (Tim Smith) writes: > The sound system of every language contains a finite number of > phonemes, and a finite (but much larger) number of syllables. > Therefore, any alphabet (phomeme-glyph mapping), or any > syllabary (syllable-glyph mapping) should be finite. That is very true in Devanagari script. There are only 33 alphabets in Devanagari script and they produce unique phonetic words. This means that you can pronounce any unheard word (of any language) exactly the way it is written in Devanagari script without any ambiguity. Devanagari script is used by Sanskrit and Hindi, the two prominent languages of India. - Virendra