Gulf (novel) - Speedtalk

Speedtalk

The supermen communicate in an arcane language called Speedtalk, which is both unintelligible and unlearnable by outsiders. Speedtalk is founded upon two principles: a reduced lexicon, and an enlarged phonology.

Any English sentence can be composed from a small vocabulary, such as the word set of Basic English. Also, although the human vocal tract can produce hundreds of different sounds, no existing human language normally makes use of more than a few dozen of them. In Speedtalk, each word from the Basic English set is assigned to a different sound. A sentence in Basic English can therefore be pronounced in perhaps one fourth the normal time.