Re: Number of syllables in Cantonese

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> 
> PS, just for the record: my pocket dictionary of Cantonese
> lists about 5300 characters with about 1800 distinct
> pronounciations (syllables).

	I'm still trying to make sense of the 8200 words in
the VMs.  Robert Firth's paradigm accounts for ~80% of
the tokens.  This 80% is about 280 words.  But that
leaves ~7900 words that the paradigm doesn't account
for.  

	Could it be that this is something like a shorthand
system?  There's an easy way (the Firth paradigm) to
write the most common words, and the rest, those that
don't fit the paradigm, represent the balance of the
1800 distinct syllables, or the balance of the 5300
characters?

	Also - in Hamptonese I saw words that were obviously
the same but the spelling differed.  Could we seeing
this in the VMs.

	I need to look at Stolfi's paradigms.  I read his
Voynichese word grammar, but I think that his paradigms
might well be more applicable here.  

Dennis