n850 words sufficient to
express anything that could be expressed by "normal"
human vocabularies: Ogden’s Basic English (not sci-fi)
n"Blood, toil,
tears and sweat" becomes "Blood, hard work, eyewash and body
water”
nPhoneticians analyzed
all human tongues into about 100-odd sounds, represented by the
letters of a general phonetic alphabet
nEach capable of
variation: length, pitch, …