Yup. But again there are tradeoffs: it could be that complete neutrality ends up making a less useful language than any of several different non-neutral options. (E.g., because you definitely want some words for siblings, but you don’t want too many because there are other things to do with the possible-word-space they would occupy, and then every way of having not-too-many ends up not being “culturally neutral” because it inevitably favours some categorizations over others.)
Do you think it’s just incompetence that has led to existing languages not using every possible short combination of sounds to make words?
Incompetence would assume that the existing languages are designed to be the way they are.
English has 12 vowels (not counting diphthongs) and 24 consonants. Does that mean that English needs 296 different words with two sounds? No, but maybe 100?
Then everything is alright isn’t it? The Oxford dictionary contains 100 two letters words. No, it isn’t. It contains words such as aa which is Basaltic lava forming very rough, jagged masses with a light frothy texture. Often contrasted with pahoehoe. and a lot of other junk like ki which is a plant of the lily family.
Quite a lot of English is haphazardly borrowed together. But my main point was that a lot of the list of two letter words in the Oxford dictionary doesn’t look like “real English words”.
Yup. But again there are tradeoffs: it could be that complete neutrality ends up making a less useful language than any of several different non-neutral options. (E.g., because you definitely want some words for siblings, but you don’t want too many because there are other things to do with the possible-word-space they would occupy, and then every way of having not-too-many ends up not being “culturally neutral” because it inevitably favours some categorizations over others.)
Possible word space is vast. None of the words I used even compete with words in the English language or are easily confused for English words.
Possible word space within a given language is not so vast, and shouldn’t be filled too tightly.
Do you think it’s just incompetence that has led to existing languages not using every possible short combination of sounds to make words?
Incompetence would assume that the existing languages are designed to be the way they are.
English has 12 vowels (not counting diphthongs) and 24 consonants. Does that mean that English needs 296 different words with two sounds? No, but maybe 100?
Then everything is alright isn’t it? The Oxford dictionary contains 100 two letters words. No, it isn’t. It contains words such as
aawhich isBasaltic lava forming very rough, jagged masses with a light frothy texture. Often contrasted with pahoehoe.and a lot of other junk likekiwhich isa plant of the lily family.It has been suggested that this kind of lava was named by the first Hawaiian who tried to walk across it barefoot :-)
In any case, this is a foreign borrowed word.
Quite a lot of English is haphazardly borrowed together. But my main point was that a lot of the list of two letter words in the Oxford dictionary doesn’t look like “real English words”.