Reddit reviews The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language

I invent a naming language.

For my high-fantasy game world I took the time to sit down with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Encyclopedia-Language-David-Crystal/dp/0521736501) and the Zompist site (http://www.zompist.com/resources/) and build a set of naming languages. Then I wrote a program that uses the rules that I distilled to generate names.

For a far-future science-fiction setting where player characters are artificial intelligences, I came up with a scheme for mapping bytes to components of names, and wrote a program to generate 64-bit names.

If you're a programmer, it's pretty easy to write programs that generate names, if you have a general idea of what you want the names to look like. You can do it several ways:

• travesty generators, like Dissociated Press (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travesty_generator)
  
  
• Markov chains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#Markov_text_generators)
  
  
• rule-driven generators (make a table that encodes the rules that names have to follow and randomly choose elements that follow the rules)
  
  If you use generated names, you have to do some tuning and selection because occasionally you'll get really terrible ones. I don't find the tuning onerous because the testing usually ends up making me laugh. All of the above types of generators can generate some hilarious names.
  
  

Here is a good start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#History

>Inconsistencies and irregularities in English pronunciation and spelling have gradually increased in number throughout the history of the English language. There are a number of contributing factors. First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift, account for a tremendous number of irregularities. Second, relatively recent loan words from other languages generally carry their original spellings, which are often not phonetic in English.

>The regular spelling system of Old English was swept away by the Norman Conquest, and English itself was supplanted in some spheres by Norman French for three centuries, eventually emerging with its spelling much influenced by French. English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, which naturally kept their French spellings as there was no reason or mechanism to change them.

This book was recommended in another thread:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521736501

I'll echo the obvious: linguistics. "A Very Short Introduction" would be good, as would be "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" ( http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Encyclopedia-Language-David-Crystal/dp/0521736501 ).

I started getting interested in linguistics very young (beginning at 4, then with much more interest in high school when I began to take German). Now I'm in an MA program in Linguistics and am aiming for a Ph.D. to be a professor in the field. Enjoy!

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language is actually very readable even though it's an "encyclopedia." Probably not exactly what you were looking for, but I'd suggest taking a look at it. It's expensive, but perhaps a local library has it.

I'm going to reply to this in a rather obtuse and general manner and just link with as many resources as I can, as I don't currently have time to fully explore the subject, and I'm not overly familiar with the philosophy of language and/or communication studies.

As to your opening comments, "how communication takes place and forms" makes me think you'd be really interested in Conversational Analysis - this Wiki article sources a lot of excellent resources.

1. Yes, of course, we both study language. I'm sorry I can't speak overly to specifics here, I don't know exactly where they intersect. I would guess somewhere in the Anthropological Ling, CogSci, or Sociolinguistics specializations, though I could most definitely be wrong here.
   
   
2. Pragmatics and Semantics are your best bets here, and likely the Conversation Analysis page I've already linked.
   
   
3. Wiki has an OK overview, but to me it has always seemed very fragmented and confusing. The Linguistics Society of America has a good Why Should I Major in Linguistics? page, though I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for. There is also this Linguistics Careers PDF that I stumbled across a while back that might have some useful info for you. Honestly, taking an Intro to Ling class is a good place to start if you're interested, as it's about the only way to really get a good grasp. You could also try just buying a textbook for a Ling 101 class, or browsing a nearby (University) Library's linguistics section. If you want a book, the most basic overview I can find on my shelf (most of the classes I take now are very specialized) is The Linguistic Wars, which does a good job of summing up the last 50 years of Linguistics in a decently accessible format without going overboard. David Crystal's Encyclopedia of Language is also interesting, but it's not really a page turner IMO. Encyclopedia is the right word.
   
   I'd be happy to answer more questions if you have any, though I am sorry I am not more familiar with Communication Studies and Philosophy of Language.