Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Languages, Idiomas, Sprachen, langues, språk, 言語, Γλώσσες, زبان
How many languages do you think exist? While much of cryptology is based on mathematics, a lot of it is also based on linguistics. There are over 6900 recognized languages in the world. In the United States alone, there are over 200 languages spoken. How would cryptology be different if everyone in the entire world spoke the same language? Would it even make a difference, since codes can involve replacing figures with numbers and symbols as well? When a code is intercepted, how does the cryptanalyst know which language the code is in? Where do you even start!
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This was mentioned in one of my short stories! He had to think about what the message might be from in order to deduce the language it was written in. Yet, I have always been curious about how the cryptanalyst work around the language obstacle. I guess that is why so many of the people recruited to decode messages were linguistics and language experts!
ReplyDeleteI think some rare language itself just seems like a code. If people who have no knowledge about such language, they can not understand it. If there is only one language in the world, the security of code will decrease and the diversity of code will also decrease.
ReplyDeleteWell, here's the question you really have to ask, if we all spoke the same language, does that directly mean that we all wright in the same language?
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting point, and I agree with what Sam said the writing aspect is really important as well. Also do cryptanalysts get recruited based on linguistics as well?
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