# minimal english #language i remarked in semicolon that you dont actually need any punctuation at all to write english its perfectly understandable to fluent speakers with only lowercase or uppercase letters space and newline in fact most english speakers probably write approximately like this most of the time now it is comfortable to write and reasonably comfortable to read especially in a text chat environment although punctuation and capitalization make it far more pleasant for the reader for example we could really use a comma or a period so we dont have to use so many newlines and if you dont use apostrophes you will make fluent speakers want to strangle you through your screen although your spelling is probably so bad that the missing apostrophes barely register anyway letters plus space plus newline equals twenty eight characters which fits in only five bits with another four characters to spare for some luxuries like a question mark how else will you know to add rising inflection oh okay yeah we just know but then again we probably want some numerals there are 10 of those so if we add them we blow right past 5 bits and into 6 with a total of 38 characters this is a luxury we cannot afford for whatever reason in our hypothetical hyperconstrained environment we need to delete 6 letters there are some obvious freebies k q x w vve can cuicly eliminate those and still understand ezactly vvhat is meant although it is very ugly and vvords vvith a leading cay might be an issue licce novvledge cnovvledge necst vve can remove f and replace it vvith ph in phact this is so comprehensible phor english speaccers that people already do it in the vvild all the time mostly to call you phaggot in a video game same vvith the doubled c to be cute vvith vvords licce succ and goths do the vv thing they and blacc metal phans neopagans etc vvrite u as v sometimes so that is a candidate phor our last deletion or vve could drop y or j vvhich vvould be rather more unintuitive to most hobbie lobbie phor ecsample is phine but jes vvould be read as jess iph vve drop y better to eyect j and yump into the conphusion head on still loocs phunny but is less ambiguous but vvait vve have numbers vvhat about 1337 vv3 c4n d31373 4n0th3r nin3 13773r5 8y m4ppin6 34ch num83r t0 0n3 0ph th3m n07 73n 51nc3 9 i5 0ur cu3 vvhich vv3 r3m0v3d 34r1i3r 50 i 6u355 vv3 607 0n3 84cc vv3 c0u1d a1s0 d0u813 up 8y m4ccin6 1 80th i 4nd 311 0r 4 b07h 4 4nd y 8u7 1375 n07 637 700 c4rri3d 4vv4y 17 n33d5 70 83 136i813 4ph73r 411