Work
Beck is remembered for his book, "The Universal Character", published in London in 1657; it was also published the same year in French. The books's full title was "The Universal Character, by which all Nations in the World may understand one another's Conceptions, Reading out of one Common Writing their own Mother Tongues. An Invention of General Use, the Practise whereof may be Attained in two Hours' space, Observing the Grammatical Directions. Which Character is so contrived, that it may be Spoken as well as Written".
In his book Beck sought to invent a universal language that could be understood and used by anyone in the world, no matter what their mother tongue. It was based on the ten Arabic numerals, 0-9, which he proposed the following pronunciations:
1. Aun, 2. Too, 3. Tray, 4. For orfo, 5. Fai, 6. Sic, 7. Sen, 8. At, 9. Nin, 0. o.
The combinations of these characters, intended to express all the main words in any language, were to be arranged in numerical order, from zero to 10,000, which he considered sufficient to cover all words in general use.
Every word was assigned a unique number and this number was the same whatever the native language of the user. Each language would have its own alphabetically ordered list of words for reference. Letters were also used in his system, either before or after the number, to indicate concepts like nouns, cases, verbal tenses etc.
The system, though arousing interest, was not well received by those who studied it. The words were in most instances extended to an unmanageable length, and the difficulty of discovering the meaning of the numerical group which represented the desired "radical" was increased by the still greater difficulty of disconnecting the number from the modifying appendage, and of analysing the component parts of the latter.
On the frontispiece of Beck's "The Universal Character" is an engraving by William Faithorne, and the figure of the European is supposed, with great probability, to be the portrait of the author.
Read more about this topic: Cave Beck
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“I am not describing a distant utopia, but the kind of education which must be the great urgent work of our time. By the end of this decade, unless the work is well along, our opportunity will have slipped by.”
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“O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d
The work for which thou wast foretold
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Among thy slain self-kill’d
Not willingly, but tangl’d in the fold
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“We’d like to fight but we fear defeat,
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We’d like to behave, we’d like to believe,
We’d like to love, but we’ve lost the knack.”
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